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Time to cut Ulster loose?

Should NI be cut loose

  • Time for a province independence referendum

    Votes: 25 31.3%
  • Union with the south

    Votes: 21 26.3%
  • Commonwealth status

    Votes: 9 11.3%
  • Full rule from Westminster

    Votes: 19 23.8%
  • Home rule from Stormont

    Votes: 20 25.0%

  • Total voters
    80
I can object to it being spent where it isn't earned!
But that's how all taxes work, the public sector takes from the private productive industries and spends it on the public non productive ones. Income tax is the same, if you work in the public sector you don't pay income tax you just recycle it. With the regions if the government doesn't put money into the poor bits they all go to London looking for work and it gets a bit silly and London prices pump inflation etc. Red hander is right you might as well object to the weather.
 
I think the difference is that most parts of UK accept they are part of a single entity. In Northern Ireland there is no real connection to the rest of the UK and Loyalism does not equate to loyalty to this country only a selfish loyalty to themselves and their squalid way of life. The Catholics are no better.

And that embarrassingly inept generalisation is based upon what research ?
 
Because we'll need the EU and the ECB again. We're tied to the EU and so have to sing from the same hymn sheet. But also there's a hope or belief that Brexit brings Irish unification a bit closer. And all sides in Irish politics are committed to that goal to one extent or another. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have the same DNA as Sinn Féin. FG was formed (many years on) from the Shinners that supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922. FF was formed in 1926 from the Shinners that lost the Civil War but who wanted to abandon SF's abstention from Dáil Éireann. They all take slightly different paths and do less wittering about unification in the South because very few people give a Fiddler's on a day to day basis. But essentially all Parties support the long term goal of unification. As long as the Tories don't invent a hard border, Leo Varadker doesn't care one way or the other what the British do.

An independent NI would never work, they can’t make it work semi-independently sure (either politically or financially)

My old man told me that 45 years ago.
He was right
 
There a good people too, plenty of them

Agreed. We have a deal, I cheerfully contribute when the pipe band rattles a bucket. In return they tramp round the far end of the village. (Considering this deal was hammered out 20 years ago at around 2am in a bar on a Sunday morning. I’ve nothing in writing, either they honoured the deal or they can’t find my house)
 
Don't forget a almost mutiny among Officers @ Curragh camp in March 1914

What I always found interesting was in april the Ulster Volunteers got 24,000 rifles from the Germans and this was not considered an act of treason....
[/QUOTE]
There are lots of strange issues that are assigned to the troubled Emerald Isle, though in fairness, they had less to do with the Irish and more to do with the extension or preservation of percieved British national interests. I suspect too that the Kaiser's generosity towards the Carsonites had more to do with Germany's colonial ambition than any empathy with the North.

Consider also the mass recruitment of over 700 serving RIC men and Auxiliaries in 1920 for the British Gendarmerie in Palestine. That went well! And when it all turned to the brown stuff the solution was to appoint a former head of the RUC to try to sort it out. Guess what he did? He built a series of reinforced joint Police and Army Forts across what is now Palestine and parts of Israel ......... bet you thought these were invented in South Armagh in the 70s/80s. Nothing like a failed blast from the past being presented as a 'new' investment in Ulster's security.

The late Roy Jenkins of Lib/Lab and SDP fame once made the point much more truthfully than anyone......."Although the British government can claim great expertise in the world of politics, solving the problems of Ireland isn't part of it."
 
There are lots of strange issues that are assigned to the troubled Emerald Isle, though in fairness, they had less to do with the Irish and more to do with the extension or preservation of percieved British national interests. I suspect too that the Kaiser's generosity towards the Carsonites had more to do with Germany's colonial ambition than any empathy with the North.

Consider also the mass recruitment of over 700 serving RIC men and Auxiliaries in 1920 for the British Gendarmerie in Palestine. That went well! And when it all turned to the brown stuff the solution was to appoint a former head of the RUC to try to sort it out. Guess what he did? He built a series of reinforced joint Police and Army Forts across what is now Palestine and parts of Israel ......... bet you thought these were invented in South Armagh in the 70s/80s. Nothing like a failed blast from the past being presented as a 'new' investment in Ulster's security.

The late Roy Jenkins of Lib/Lab and SDP fame once made the point much more truthfully than anyone......."Although the British government can claim great expertise in the world of politics, solving the problems of Ireland isn't part of it."[/QUOTE]
I think you will find that the first British use of Blockhouses was during the second south African war, Kitchener I believe.
 
You certainly bloody do.
I had my first visit to Glasgee as a grown-up some 20 years ago and was shocked by the sheer nastiness of some of the sectarianism - which seemed even worse than in the Province
When Liam went to Glasgow, Billy lost no time in reminding him that he was a Fenian........and informed him that he was illegitimate too!
 
There are lots of strange issues that are assigned to the troubled Emerald Isle, though in fairness, they had less to do with the Irish and more to do with the extension or preservation of percieved British national interests. I suspect too that the Kaiser's generosity towards the Carsonites had more to do with Germany's colonial ambition than any empathy with the North.

Consider also the mass recruitment of over 700 serving RIC men and Auxiliaries in 1920 for the British Gendarmerie in Palestine. That went well! And when it all turned to the brown stuff the solution was to appoint a former head of the RUC to try to sort it out. Guess what he did? He built a series of reinforced joint Police and Army Forts across what is now Palestine and parts of Israel ......... bet you thought these were invented in South Armagh in the 70s/80s. Nothing like a failed blast from the past being presented as a 'new' investment in Ulster's security.

The late Roy Jenkins of Lib/Lab and SDP fame once made the point much more truthfully than anyone......."Although the British government can claim great expertise in the world of politics, solving the problems of Ireland isn't part of it."
I think you will find that the first British use of Blockhouses was during the second south African war, Kitchener I believe.[/QUOTE]
There you go, I was even more right than I thought :mrgreen:
 
Kitchener was the head of the Indian Army, weighed in to sort out the uppity Boers before retiring in the UK. Impending war put paid to that plan!
 
You can understand why block houses and cleared areas were seen as useful, they starved the Boers out and gave us a presence we otherwise would have struggled to maintain.
In NI it was useful to have troops on hilltops dug in watching major routes and acting as patrol bases.
 
You can understand why block houses and cleared areas were seen as useful, they starved the Boers out and gave us a presence we otherwise would have struggled to maintain.
In NI it was useful to have troops on hilltops dug in watching major routes and acting as patrol bases.
It was also a response to the fact that the South Armagn/Border Brigade had successfully denied us vehicular control of the boder area.
 
The late Roy Jenkins of Lib/Lab and SDP fame once made the point much more truthfully than anyone......."Although the British government can claim great expertise in the world of politics, solving the problems of Ireland isn't part of it."
Jim Callaghan was home sec I believe when the likes of Bernadette Devlin called for the troops to be deployed. Allegedly he said deploying the Army wont be difficult, getting them out again will be.
To be honest we could have withdrawn right up to internment. Thats really when it all went to ratshit! Binning the B Specials was needed but the loss of "Intelligence" meant we probably put ourselves back about 4 years and internment was the only way. The problem became keeping the sods locked up and treated as criminals not revolutionaries.
 
Jim Callaghan was home sec I believe when the likes of Bernadette Devlin called for the troops to be deployed. Allegedly he said deploying the Army wont be difficult, getting them out again will be.
To be honest we could have withdrawn right up to internment. Thats really when it all went to ratshit! Binning the B Specials was needed but the loss of "Intelligence" meant we probably put ourselves back about 4 years and internment was the only way. The problem became keeping the sods locked up and treated as criminals not revolutionaries.
It was also a response to the fact that the South Armagn/Border Brigade had successfully denied us vehicular control of the boder area.

The Rural areas would always need a fixed fortification presence, even if they had stayed away from IEDs we would have set too many patterns and become vulnerable to vehicle ambushes by gunfire. Them attacking PVCPs with mortars and finally section attacks was proof that they were working, denying the enemy free use and (sadly) acting as target meant they had to attack or be shown as ineffective. There were many campaigns against fixed bases over the years, it does show that they were a problem for the bad guys.
 

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