WTF.A minutes silence for the death of Queen Elizabeth in the Dail today. Micheal Collins and Dev

Ok. First off you're talking about the 1920's, so the British still had their empire. Without the treaty Ireland would have remained a part of the empire in a state of rebellion.

What "more" resources would Ireland have had? Taxes went to the British government, there would have been no Irish Army only a poorly armed ira which was fast running out of its ability to resist. So the idea they would have sustained a revolution until the 50's is laughable.

Remember as well the British army fought with one arm tied behind its back, suppose they decided to take the gloves off?

And all this while ww2 was still to come. Ultimately a united Ireland was never going to happen by force, if Ireland had tried to occupy the North we would have still ended up with the troubles only it would be an Irish force as the occupiers.

"the lives of the irish would have improved more had the treaty not been signed because the orange statelet would never have been created."

A common misconception - the northern ireland statelet was already well before Michael Collins went to negotiate the treaty

i will be getting what i want, that's a fact and a done deal.

not for him as he is the one who has grown up and isn't living in the past like all real republicans.

it is you and others who are guilty of that charge as you are showing way to much deference to britain and are looking for their approval.

republicans on the other hand don't need approval from britain as we are content and are sure in our reality.

the full resources of the british army had to operate in the rest of the empire and operate at home, so the full resources were never going to be able to be used against ireland, even once the majority of the empire died.

britain still had to protect itself and it was still recovering from bankruptsy.

remember the IRA brought the BA to a stailmate ultimately, the only way that may have changed is if the british went in and slaughtered all around them, but then again resources wouldn't really have allowed for that.

remember also that the americans had to bail them out in WWII, and WWI as well by the way.

we got 30 years of blood shed anyway.

better to have got it out of the way earlier as there was going to be violence anyway thanks to the failure that is partition.

His childish post says he has not grown up. Its not looking for approval, its showing good manners. Been bitter about something that happened 100 years ago is not a good way to live life.

Tomorrow she will be all forgotten about. The media will drop her like a stone.

Not at all , Francie , they've to start preparing for the coronation next .People will work themselves in a frenzy round these parts shortly.

I've a feeling that a lot of the goodwill towards the monarchy has died along with the Queen. Australia, NZ are talking about becoming republics etc etc

I think the Queen was a nice old inoffensive lady, not sure if future monarchs will enjoy the same deference

As usual it isn't all rosy downcow. Some perspective here.

Charles has a difficult task ahead of him, his reign will be dogged by comparisons to his mother and my bet is he won't be up to it.

I also think the shackles are off the press now too and we may see some unsavory reports about what was done during the 70 year reign to perserve the monarchy.

Is there a point there?

I am not surprised by the national grief over the queen, I lived through the aftermath of Di's death after all. We have seen national outpourings of grief in various forms all over the world. It was always going to be this way and isn't that unexpected or unusual.

The monarchy and establishment cultivated this reaction for years, even the monarch herself knew what would happen on her death and by moving the funeral service to the more prime location of Westminster was maximising it's value. The people were meant to react in the way they did.

It's over now and normality will resume. The divides and relaities will still be there in the UK. I don't think monarchy will have a cure for what ails TBH.

the 6 belong to ireland, so yes britain did keep 6 of our counties so as to cause trouble and use belfast's ship building and associated workers.

actually no i would never be happy being part of the uk/being part of one of the home nations as i believe being independant and working with our EU partners offers ireland real opportunities and economic benefits whereas the UK has nothing to offer, just look at how far behind northern ireland is in comparison to the rest of the UK.

Protests in the UK itself yesterday too.

Why would you want to 'excuse' them?

Is your respect not strong enough or something?

Not everyone shares your respect.

Lots of comments like yours about not living in the past so this isn't directed at your comment per se.

Imagine if the Third Reich was still in power, should Israel have a minutes silence for Hitler's great grandson.

I get things have moved on and she was an icon in her own right but her people done terrible terrible things to this country.

I can see why some people don't respect the person who was commander in chief on bloody Sunday.

It's their free choice and I respect their choice.

You on the other hand want to ram your view down other people's throats.

Live and let live.

it does.

it's an institution built on empirialism, racism, colonisation, slavery, discrimination, subjecation and theft, so people have a right to protest against it whether in britain or elsewhere.