Cost of a United Ireland and the GFA

I didn’t say they would withdraw. I said that given their experience they would likely do what many other identities do when they feel excluded and unsafe, they CLUSTER.

Ireland has lots of different nationalities. You seem basically affraid that a UI will do exactly what NI did. Why would we want to copy that ugly failed jurdicition. Nobody wants that. Even most republicans know that would be stupid. Equality and freedom of expression and there wont be social issues.

The jurisdiction itself doesn't need to get involved in identity bar a few things. Name of state will be Ireland. Official languages irish, English, ulster scots. National holiday. 17th march. Perhaps make the 11th too a public holiday given its significance. New flag and anthem. That is about it.

Your fallback position is moving to Britain? Hey paddy what brings you over here. You sure you want to be hearing that daily.

All Christians of Ireland celebrate him. Natinal holiday if the OWC. The 12th on the other hand id just celebrated by protestants. So they're not similar.

Because of the shitbox sectarian divide in the north everything has to be owned. If themuns celebrate that then i cant. If themuns use that flag then i cant. If themuns call themselves that then i cant.

It’s only a public holiday very recently because sf were pushing for it. The high school I attended is based 100m from st Patrick’s grave and up until a couple of years ago the school was open on st Patrick’s day. Kids were let out about noon so as they could get home before the big parade began. That changed a couple of years ago primarily due to the growing number of Catholics attending the school who wanted to celebrate and the school community wanted to facilitate that.

I think you don’t understand the north if you do not realise that the vast vast majority of people attending st Patrick’s events are catholic. Nobody I know is anti it but the parades would be a very cold house for unionists.

Don’t understand first bit of your post. Second bit demonstrates the arrogance of some and the dangers of people being dominant either eu or Ireland.

is the eu now taking ownership of the term European? Now that’s a pretty arrogant stance.

It was actually proposed by Alliance and Unionists supported it as long as the Union flag could fly that day, whatever that was about, insecurity maybe?

I liked your last post and agreed with most of it, but then you swing to a place where you can’t see that you are trying to impose on my community how they should think.

I don’t refer to myself as Irish. I don’t jump up and down when someone refers to our team, or Rory today, as Irish. I’m quite relaxed about it. It’s just not me.

I am European but not something I would ever describe myself as, but if you want to restrict that to people who live in the eu I won’t get upset.

I am only guessing, here but I would think that Colombians would not want to be referred to as Americans even though they live in the continent of America.

if it helps you to refer to me as Irish, the. That’s ok. I know many unionists who would say they are northern Irish, British and Irish. Maybe there will be a time when I feel comfortable to do that as well.

rory is a good example today. He is a catholic from ni whose northern irishness is very important to him. He requests the ni flag etc. Carl frampton is a northern prod married to a catholic who is exactly the same. His northern irishness is priority.

I think you are genuinely trying to be fair, and I like much of what you are saying. But to try and call me out for hypocrisy for saying I am European and not Irish is inconsistent and prejudiced. Would you call out someone from Colombia who said they were Colombian, Latin American, Latino, South American, but who said they would never refer to themselves as American?

Are you going to ask people from Gibraltar to refer to themselves as Spanish?. I am friendly with Catalans who are adamant they are not Spanish

now maybe if you think why they wouldn’t refer to themselves as American/Spanish you might start to understand why I won’t refer to myself as Irish.

I would love you to take another step and try to understand why northern Irish are not Irish. You live on the British archipelago . I think about 600 islands and the vast vast vast majority of them are British but I am not going to tell you that you are British because you live on the British archipelago. We would loose something of our British isles richness if we forced you to be british.

try to give us the space to be northern Irish

I was trying to be sympathetic to you but this last post is bigoted prejudicial nonsense.

you say: Gibraltar and Spain are two different jurisdictions- so are ni and roi

you say: “Give me one unique culture that is unique to the people who live within the boundary line pulled out of Carsons arse in 1921? It is just a failed jurisdiction on Ireland and part of the UK.” Tell me how you define culture and I will happily but I’m not playing your games.

you say: “Put your hand up and just admit it is bigotry is the reason You will get more respect here.” Ok, since I garner your respect; I am a bigot. Every unionist in OWC is a bigot. We are really Irish. We have just forgot over the centuries of living in the Uk. We will seek counselling to rid us of this idea that we are British.

it’s also bigotry that causes the Catalans and and basque to say they are not Spanish, the Palestinians to say they are not isreali, the Ukrainians to say they are not Russian, the kosovars to say they are not Serb. We are all motivated by bigotry. I am sorry we get in everyone’s way.

I could address your point by point, but I don’t want us to get into trying to trap eachother with ‘you said, I said’ and gotchas.

I think a big problem is that you won’t accept my national identity.

I perceive Irish to be one of a few possible things (3&4 are I bit fluffy but I’ll give you them)

1) people born in Ireland (country)

2) people born on island of Ireland (in the Uk) who take up the gfa offer to choose Irish nationality

3) anyone in the world who decides they have enough connections to Ireland to call themselves Irish

4) those who sign up to play for Irelands sports teams to further their career opportunities

I am clearly none of the above. But you continue to insist that I need to understand that I am irish. I would like you to understand that telling me I am irish is like telling a republican born in ni that they are British. Given our histories, insisting on either is fairly offensive.

My official nationality in the eyes of the UN etc is BRITISH, same as anyone else born in Uk (I’ll not open an argument about whether Irish born in ni are born British or Irish as that’s a rabbit hole). I also have a British passport and if I get in trouble abroad I will contact the british consulate. If I am on a plane hijacked by terrorists, and all the Irish are let off because they are neutrals, I’ll be stuck on board with the Brits (English, Scots, Welsh and norther Irish) and the Americans, etc, etc.

I then also ‘own’ a national identity of Northern Irish as that is the ‘national identity’ in the Uk that I ‘belong’ to, same relationship as welsh to wales.

None of this creates any problem for a UI. In the same way as Uk facilitates regions to have identities, I would expect a ‘new Ireland’ to have that maturity and confidence - surely that fear could be parked by the Irish when UK has finally left the island?

I’ll ask again, would you insist to my Catalan friends that they are Spanish, or to Palestinians that they are isreali?

Do you have any idea the number of people worldwide who think that Ireland is part of the Uk? I work with people from around the globe and I think you’d be surprised. That doesn’t make you british

I’ve gone into a wee bit of detail because this keeps coming up on this forum and therefore I guess it reflects a bigger misunderstanding across the island. A misunderstanding that would need sorted prior to any hope of a harmonious island

Could we not equally comment on the stupidity of people who condemn Irish people who consider themselves not British and who don't want to be part of the UK?

If the tweet is worth considering at all, it's not because of the merits of what it says — what it says has little merit — but of the phenomenon that it exemplifies. What it exemplifies is a blindness, manifested both in unionist and in nationalist politics, to a fundamental if awkward reality; this country contains both British people and Irish people, both of whom have desires and aspirations which reflect their respective identities. Condemning the expression of themmun's aspirations as "stupidity" while continuing to express your own parallel aspirations, and wholly failing to recognise the double standard you are applying, is the problem that bedevils Irish politics.

Not pointing fingers at you, downcow, but we have plenty of incidents of people, e.g, objecting to official recognition or use of the Irish language; we have a few unionists recently suggesting (in defiance of the GFA) that any poll about whether NI should leave the UK should be an all-UK poll; and of course we have the historical but still operative reality that NI itself is an entity deliberately engineered to maximise the number of Irish-identifying people who are kept outside the Irish state, and in a British state.

We are where we are; history cannot be undone and I do not think we can wave a magic wand that will unpick the effects of a hundred years of partition. But I think there is a lesson to be learned, which is that the "awkward reality" that this country contains both British and Irish people can't be addressed by trying to engineer an artificial majority of one group or the other. I think the challenge is to come up with an approach which de-emphasises the question of which group is in the majority.

In many ways, of course, that's what the GFA tries to do, as regards the strand 1 institutions. And the approach has had some success but, as I think we'd all have to agree, also some lack of success.

As between the UK and Ireland, formally they are both sovereign independent states whose equality of status does not depend on their populations or GDPs. In reality this wasn't always how things worked, and still isn't, although one of the happy side-effects of Brexit may be to bring the UK to a more realistic awareness of its own status in the international community.

That’s fair. And I am not innocent of all those charges. I did muddy the waters around whether it be a majority of the people or a majority of the voters. I know the later is the likely route.

I would love to see the poison taken out of the Irish language issue up here. I don’t want to hate the signage going up on roads where republicans can muster enough support. I would love to see this addressed in a way that the signage can go up respectfully. I know it is part of our heritage but it needs depoliticised and desectarianised. If only unionists and true Irish language lovers could get together and understand each others position/fears/etc on the issue.

An all Uk vote is a nonsense, just as much as an all island vote would be a nonsense. Should there have been a third referendum built in for Uk mainland - well that could reasonably be argued, but I would think both Uk and Ireland are likely to fall in behind what ni wants. Anyhow that vote doesn’t and won’t exist.

Fionn. That’s also a wee bit like I said about our Council tagging our roads as republican. That is more impactful than some eejit in the community putting up flags or slogans.

each community doesn’t see what their ‘wins’ are doing to the other

Point here is if your national identity is British which i have no problem with it then that also implies you're part of another nation under british tradition. Under british tradition the UK is a nation of nation. In your case under british tradition you're also part of the irish nation too. This why the national holiday is st patricks day of the OWC ect. But because you have bigotry towards Ireland you even have to try and change british tradition to suit your sectarianism. Themuns own the word irish so i cant be. This is why unionists are odd man out even within the british nation. The Scots, English Welsh all can identify and celebrate their national identity but the irish unionist cant.

Who is the patron saint of your nation (british) of people?? Uk has no national patron saint. Are you saying your nation is the only one in world who has no national patron saint even tho under british tradition you do have one but just choose to ignore because themuns own it. You do realise your sectarianism is changing british tradition which you're so adamant you are.

When i do say you're irish under british tradition you immediately try and reply with that must mean i am trying to take away the fact you're british too. This childish binary logic is inbred into your sectarian mindset.