What’s your most controversial opinion? **Read OP** **Mod Note in Post #3372**

This is great

Thanks @NewbridgeIR

Great track!

Getting angry about the opinions of anonymous strangers on the internet is the sign of a second-rate mind. It’s a total waste of time and emotional energy. If it’s happening to you then you probably need to stop using the internet so much and learn better coping strategies for difficult emotions.

This one I would struggle with for sure. Its kind of saying the English language, Shakespeare, a bunch of inventions and the Beatles far outweighs ..... well its a long list.

These days, women are more likely to have the legs cut under them by other women than men.

No, it doesn't outweighs anything. The bad is still bad, and the good is still good. Colonialism not only that it wasn't all bad, but in most cases, after the dust settled, the colonized countries were better off, and so was the whole world.

There are far too many parent & child car parking spaces now at shopping centres , supermarkets, airports etc.

and why they are always almost or as close to the shopping venue or destination as the accessible ones ?

The way businesses these days bend themselves over to facilitate the comfort, convenience and needy whims of Mams & Dads and their kids, ahead of people who actually need or could do with parking a vehicle close to their desired destination to assist with a medical / mobility problem or situation.

giving space for loading and unloading kids and buggys ? Fine, but let it be in the furthest flung corner of the car park. Pushing a kid in a buggy isn’t exactly a challenging task…

getting a wheelchair or walking frame from a car, to a person alighting requires space and the person using the mobility aid would sure appreciate the space and less of a journey to their destination….. all about the kids, Mams & Dads in 2023 though innit…. 👨‍👨‍👧‍👦

Look at Africa. Countries invented out of thin air where tribes who have been fighting each other for centuries were lumped together and boxed in by arbitrary lines. Once the colonial age ended, whoever was in charge went to town on the minorities (usually, centuries-old enemies) or places like Gambia where the British carved out a country along the banks of a river and created conflict among peers. South Africa? They certainly left a civilised country there or was that all the fault of the Dutch?

Australia? The Caribbean? Canada? The United States? Are these successor states filled with institutionalised racism truly civilised? Just look up North; on our island, the British laid the foundations for what has proven to be on our own version of Israel.

This is the legacy of British colonialism. Its only considered civilised because they speak English and they were the ones who wrote history. I don't see what was so 'civilised' about looting lands by force under the guise of bringing 'civilised' cultural concepts to the detriment of the native population.

And that's just the British.

People who think that colonialism wasn't "all that bad" are either ignorant, insincere, trolling or racist. This 'civilisation' crap is favourable retconning by people who spend too much time owning the concept of British supremacy to be able to acknowledge they were wrong.

There is no way of knowing how America or Africa would have developed if Europeans hadn't invaded in the name of greed. In America, Europeans decimated the native populations and in Africa, they exacerbated existing problems by imposing societal structures that did not match the local context.

We can go back and forth on how one system is better than another but, at the end of the day, Europeans didn't go to these places to spread their great ideas of "civilised society"; they were searching for more land to control, resources to plunder and people for manpower.

Just accept it and own it: "civilisation" is a fancy byword for greed.

Sorry, I confused you with the poster who originally said the British were a civilising influence.

Do you think that, perhaps, the remaining uncontacted tribes are hostile to outsiders because of previous experiences? Or you just think they are a naturally hostile people? If so, are Europeans not naturally hostile given their history of colonialism?

Essentially, you believe that the ends justify the means when it comes to greed; I don't.

Essentially I am a pragmatist who believes the world is a better place now thanks to the expansion of western culture and civilization.

While I am certainly grateful to live in the West, I just can't agree that the world, as a whole, is a better place because of the expansion of Western civilisation.

There are far more friendly nations than the Republic of Ireland, half of the Irish population are grumpy, aggressive, greedy, selfish, zero manners ar$eholes and I think Northern Irish people are actually friendlier than us.

take people from Romania, Spain, Canada etc way more friendly and nice people than people from the Republic of Ireland.

manners is a huge issue these days, I am in business and the percentage of Irish people who dont know how to say thank you is crazy and sad in my opinion, you are nothing if you dont have basic manners.

I dont think so. When the dust settled, whatever that means.

Apart from the obvious, of famine in Ireland and the troubles.

Look at all of the countries that Britain colonized.

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh - nearly 2bn people, a very high proportion of whom live in poverty.

West Indies - indigenous populations entirely wiped out. 100%. There is no indigenous population in the Carribean, they all died. So how exactly were they better off.

Africa - millions of people seized in the middle of the night (thats literally what they did, attacked villages in the middle of the night to catch people unawares) and transported, via Liverpool and Bristol to the New World.

Aboriginal people in Australia marginalised in their own country. Likewise North America.

Opium wars in China.

I feel like I am stating the obvious here, but some people think that just by saying that these things happened, that you are some sort of zealot. Maybe its not clear to people, I dont know.

And I am by no means anti-English, the poorer classes in Britain sufferred just as much as many of their counterparts in other parts of the 'Empire'.