The wondrous adventures of Sinn Fein (part 3) Mod Notes and Threadbanned List in OP

Yee Gods but I have been reading the last few pages here and I agree with a few posters since Moscow switched off an awfully lot of Pro Sf posters have stopped posting.

Agreed..also I wonder will asking the EU to get behind it result in NI Unionists losing the plot..

Mary Lou is playing a blinder today by parroting the magic money tree plan from Pearse, he obviously forgot to tell her about the missing €700 million.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the silence here is a direct result of HQ sending out a memo to the online supporters and members not to talk about SF deleting all their anti EU pro Russian articles.

Silence on the matter.

Very strange.

You're both discussing it right now!

It is amazing how our social circles can sometimes just reflect our own opinions back on us though, it is almost like we select people to socialise with who reflect our own thoughts and biases rather than a random sample. I'd imagine both of your social circles don't talk about their intentions to vote SF terribly often either, yet polling suggests more people intend to do that than vote for any other party.

That being said, even in my own social circle that would broadly be pro-Unification, it certainly isn't something coming up in daily conversation and it doesn't have a sense of imminence around it.

Ah now, that was just a bit of gentle teasing, Maryanne. Don't take it so hard.

The core point I made stands; we tend to build our social circles with broadly similar views to our own. It is unsurprising that someone who either does not support or does not care about Unification would be part of a social circle that doesn't discuss Unification. I'm sure MLMD's social circles discuss it quite often.

Much like my other point, I'm sure there aren't vast swathes of your social circle considering voting for SF, yet polling shows there are more currently considering voting for them than any other political party.

What your (or my) 'circle' discusses isn't necessarily reflective of broader public opinion is my point.

Christ, as someone who strongly supports Unification and has used most of my posts on here discussing it, it certainly isn't top of my list of priorities. Given the uptick in Shinner support, I doubt it is top of the list of priorities for most of their voters any more either.

Not a priority doesn't mean it isn't being discussed widely though, and even in the case of you and your friends, not discussing politics doesn't mean they don't have opinions on it, some of your social circle may even have very strong opinions on it. I'm guessing you didn't just assume that your friends didn't support the referenda on gay marriage or abortion rights just because you don't discuss politics as a group?

I'd be very curious as to how your work colleagues REGULARLY discuss SF and Unification has NEVER come up (even negatively or passing comment about how unimportant it was), unless there's a bit of wordplay obfuscation going on there, and by discussing SF you mean in a largely disparaging manner.

So pretty much what I suggested.

I'd be in agreement with them by the way, but let's at least be honest with what we're talking about.

Passing comments like, 'jaysus they talk some sh*te, but they couldn't be worse than this crowd' I'd believe Unification didn't come up, but I'd hardly describe that sort of passing comment as, SF being, 'regularly discussed' as you initially said.

Any sort of in depth discussion about them, the topic of Unification inevitably comes up. See the post above from our Brendy patting you on the back....with his take as SF putting Unification front and centre of everything, hard to imagine discussing them in any sort of depth and Unification not getting even a passing mention, even if to disagree with them on it as Brendy does.

Check it the Orgy Sinn Féin account.

It's not as funny as the real thing but it's one of the best parody accounts around.

Been told to stay silent or else.

Very apt given the situation in the far east right now.

I can certainly see it being talked about much less in border counties since the GFA for obvious reasons. Among my social circle in the border counties (I'm from a border town myself, I'm a Fermanagh native), there has been a noticeable uptick in the conversation since Brexit though. I've said it a few times, though I wouldn't claim it as a particularly original thought, but the DUP have done more for Unification than the Shinners ever managed.

As for your workplace, that's pretty much part of the point I was making; discussing SF in any sort of depth, it is difficult for Unification to completely not come up as a topic for discussion..... though being discussed doesn't necessarily mean in a positive light. My issue was around claims that groups were discussing SF regularly and the topic had just never come up, when others on the thread are disparaging SF for having Unification TOO front and centre, as the core intention behind everything.

As for MLMD.....you'd have to imagine one of a few things; the first would be that even the sort of person who wouldn't be bothered talking about Unification down the pub inevitably finds themself discussing it when speaking with the leader of SF, who place it so centrally to what they stand for and that has given her a biased view of how much it is being discussed when the leader of SF isn't in the room. The second is that she's engaging in a little of the wordplay I was referring to earlier and including those who are vocally saying they don't want it (after all, those people are still discussing it widely), the third being that the social circles of those with such strong negative feelings towards SF as to be regularly posting in a thread like this also aren't entirely reflective of the opinions of the broader public.

I'd imagine a mixture of all the above, I'd imagine MLMD's social circle isn't likely to include a huge number of rabidly anti-SF, anti-Unification folk, much like I'd imagine the average poster on this thread doesn't have a huge number of the sort of folk sitting in The Felons bar in West Belfast or Peadar Brown's in Dublin in theirs. The broader reality is probably somewhere in between the two experiences.