United Ireland/Final solution:Poll

slipss

Ok so this is hypothetical but if a referendum was held tomorow and you had the
deciding vote, what would it be?

Karoma

"Final solution" ... Yes.... Yes.

dlofnep

Where's the poll?

Karoma

above:p

Attol

If there was a way to get rid of it it would be so much easier!

Lump

Eh... I think option 1 should be RE-Unite the 32 counties.

John

dlofnep

Fair play Lump.

riptide

Lump wrote:

Eh... I think option 1 should be RE-Unite the 32 counties.

John

Exactly!! My opinion too. Its only natural. Natural as the sun rising.

slipss

Lump wrote:

Eh... I think option 1 should be RE-Unite the 32 counties.

John

well unite, re-unite the meaning is the same but point taken

murphaph

Eh, to those of you still wanting a 32 county republican utopia, were you in a coma for the last 12 hours?

Terry

romantic Ireland is dead and gone.

in a ideal world i would like to see a 32 county Ireland, but in reality, it could never happen.

leave them on their own to sort out their differences.

Binomate

We had a nice final solution on IRC. It killed two birds with one stone.

YeatsCounty

If there was a vote tomorrow, I would vote no. Neither side is ready for what a United Ireland would entail. I want a United Ireland, but not right now......not with relations like they are at the moment.

Squaddy

If we united we would be poorer and have a lower standard of living beacause we would have to pay for all their needs so I say no. Let Britain keep it.

Flex

Id love a united sovereign Ireland, but as time goes by Im accepting the fact that that just isnt going to happen. IMO, the best solution is to do the 'county option' idea they were thinking of back in 1919-1920 whereby each county votes on what they want; basically giving us back Derry, Armagh, Fermanagh and Tyrone (ie. the counties with nationalist majorities) and leaving Antrim and Down (counties with unionist majorities) to their faith and give nationalist folk in West Belfast, Moyle, Newry, etc and corresopnding unionists in Derry and other places financial aid/incentive to relocate if they want to or some guarantee they wont be discriminated against.

Of course they could redraw the border based on local government wards or something, but that would get extremely messy and based on the new '7 spuer-local government wards' or whatever theyre called in NI, it would probably be a similar soultion, except the border would run through counties rather than sticking to county boundaries. Not perfect of course.

slipss

FOOTNOTE:the vague Hitler reference is unintentional

eirebhoy

murphaph wrote:

Eh, to those of you still wanting a 32 county republican utopia, were you in a coma for the last 12 hours?

A 2 hour riot in Dublin doesn't cover up all the years of rioting in Northern Ireland and that is going to continue until something drastic is done. FFS, Setanta are doing more to re-unite north and south than anyone.

arbeitsscheuer

murphaph wrote:

Eh, to those of you still wanting a 32 county republican utopia, were you in a coma for the last 12 hours?

Heh, inspired.

That was exactly what I was thinkin while I was watchin it today.
My bruv's flat backs onto Abbey St and I thought I'd have a gander.

Crazy fcukin sh*t.

...but not a patch on London every saturday night at around 11-11:30pm!!!:D

county

slipss wrote:

Ok so this is hypothetical but if a referendum was held tomorow and you had the
deciding vote, what would it be?

whats this bull**** of turn full control over to britain in your poll,northern ireland is in british control....as it is british as in a part of the UK,please talk sense

slipss

county wrote:

whats this bull**** of turn full control over to britain in your poll,northern ireland is in british control....as it is british as in a part of the UK,please talk sense

Well to permanently hand Northern Ireland over to full british control, you must of realised what I meant, you can't be that slow, please talk sense.

flogen

Firstly, NI technically already has Self Determination, as in it can make its own mind up about it being British or Irish, it's all part of the GFA etc. etc.

Secondly, I would love to see a United Ireland but not because the majority of people on this island want it, but only if the vast, vast majority of people in the state of NI wanted it; I mean, I'm talking the majority of the Unionist community too... the minute the balance in Northern Ireland shifts from 51% - 49% Unionist to 51/49 Republican, do you think everything will just fall into place? God no, even with Unionist approval a United Ireland would take years to achieve, imagine what it's like when a huge minority of NI residents are opposed to it?!!!

I'd love a United Ireland, but I'd prefer peace on the island

county

slipss wrote:

Well to permanently hand Northern Ireland over to full british control, you must of realised what I meant, you can't be that slow, please talk sense.

i am sorry but dont the irish goverment take articles 2 and 3 out of the constitution?

slipss

county wrote:

i am sorry but dont the irish goverment take articles 2 and 3 out of the constitution?

Listen bud I was just trying to provide everybody with an option to vote for in the interest of impartiality , from what you say I think we probably have a lot of shared views on the topic, but please don't keep refering to my choice of wording, I don't have a particularly good command of english grammer, but surely you must be able to work out what I meant to imply.

arbeitsscheuer

county wrote:

i am sorry but dont the irish goverment take articles 2 and 3 out of the constitution?

Hey county, I think he means turn full control over to Westminster. As it stands there is a democratically elected assembly at stormont, as there was from 1920 to 1972, when Heath's British govt dissolved Faulkner's N.I. govt. (If my memory serves correctly)

So, in this context, he must mean Britain should dissolve Stormont and return the British Army and replace the PSNI with the RUC...

...Heh, that'd be funny...:eek:

slipss

SebtheBum wrote:

Hey county, I think he means turn full control over to Westminster. As it stands there is a democratically elected assembly at stormont, as there was from 1920 to 1972, when Heath's British govt dissolved Faulkner's N.I. govt. (If my memory serves correctly)

So, in this context, he must mean Britain should dissolve Stormont and return the British Army and replace the PSNI with the RUC...

...Heh, that'd be funny...:eek:

Thanks, hit the nail on the head, now why couldn't I say that.

county

slipss wrote:

Listen bud I was just trying to provide everybody with an option to vote for in the interest of impartiality , from what you say I think we probably have a lot of shared views on the topic, but please don't keep refering to my choice of wording, I don't have a particularly good command of english grammer, but surely you must be able to work out what I meant to imply.

ok mate,i take your point

R0ot

To detatch the North and float it away

Do ya know, when i was a kid thats the idea i had, ah well

Dave!

YeatsCounty wrote:

If there was a vote tomorrow, I would vote no. Neither side is ready for what a United Ireland would entail. I want a United Ireland, but not right now......not with relations like they are at the moment.

Yeah I agree... I'd love a UI, but after witnessing that... not just yet, eh.

arbeitsscheuer

slipss wrote:

Thanks, hit the nail on the head, now why couldn't I say that.

Well, that's simple. It's because you're not as smart as me.

/pats slipss head in a condescending manner

projectmayhem

float it away. then nuke it.

county

projectmayhem wrote:

float it away. then nuke it.

is this dublin were on about:D

R0ot

slipss wrote:

Final solution....

You any relation to adolf hitler by any chance :mad:

county wrote:

is this dublin were on about:D

lol, i really do hate dublin, so full of scum

slipss

R0ot wrote:

You any relation to adolf hitler by any chance :mad:



lol, i really do hate dublin, so full of scum

View the FOOTNOTE page 1, and I bet you thought you were being so original

ronbyrne2005

have a dual state which is part of uk and ireland with its own assembly untill theres at least two thirds of northern irish voting for a united ireland,if/when united ireland happens the unionists will continue to have british citizenship and rights and have as much of what that had (while northern ireland was in UK) as possible

county

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

have a dual state which is part of uk and ireland with its own assembly untill theres at least two thirds of northern irish voting for a united ireland,if/when united ireland happens the unionists will continue to have british citizenship and rights and have as much of what that had (while northern ireland was in UK) as possible

but people in the north have it so much better than in the south...ie tax,free heath,free education,

KerranJast

Can you imagine what would happen if we had to add another 1.4 million people to the countries economy? We'd be knocked back a decade or two. For the sake of it looking good on the map, its not worth it. How would it be of any benefit to the Republic?

Mr.Nice Guy

KerranJast wrote:

Can you imagine what would happen if we had to add another 1.4 million people to the countries economy? We'd be knocked back a decade or two. For the sake of it looking good on the map, its not worth it. How would it be of any benefit to the Republic?

Actually economists like David McWilliams feel an all-Ireland economy would benefit everybody:

The solution to Ireland's economic dilemmas - like congestion, queues, rip-offs and not being able to find a good plumber - lies just up the road.

Northern Ireland is probably the greatest untapped economic resource on the island, but politics - or at least the incessant “whataboutery'‘ that passes for sectarian politics - has ensured that we cannot see this.

Anyone who spends any time in the North will realise the logic of an all-Ireland economy, not from the narrow triumphalist view of nationalist politics, but from the pure common sense of geography. Everything is cheaper in the North, and the place is on our doorstep. To understand why we could all benefit by sharing the Republic's ferocious economic appetite, it is important to establish why the North is so much cheaper.

The main reason prices have risen so fast here is because they could. Up North, there is a lot less money sloshing around, which in turn ensures that prices have not risen so rapidly.

This is a result of numerous factors.

First, the population structure is different.

Northern Ireland's baby boom peaked in 1970, ours in 1980. So the key spending component of the economy is ten years older in the North than here.

Second, those who are spending are spending less. The easy caricature to explain this is the image of the parsimonious Prod versus the feckless Fenian, but a much more telling explanation lies in economics.

We are spending more because our incomes are growing much more quickly.

Job creation has been dramatic - unlike the North where it has been average. This year, the Republic - with a population barely three and half times bigger than the North - will create nine times more jobs.

Without taking into account the usual 100,000 of us who will change jobs next year, the Republic will absorb 11,000 immigrants a month in 2006. This is more than the entire increase in employment forecast for the North for the whole of this year.

Wages in the Republic are substantially higher, not because we are nice to our workers, but because productivity here is significantly higher. This productivity gap is largely explained by multinational investment, which has driven the economy here but has been almost absent in the North. For example, 95 per cent of the increase in Irish exports came from new multinational investment, propelling this country forward in the 1990s. In the North, however, multinational investment actually fell in the 1990s.

Tellingly, this multinational investment gave a positive boost to local suppliers of these new firms, which reinforced the uplift in productivity. This process did not occur up North.

A third factor has been the wealth effect associated with house prices. Although house prices have been rising in the North, they have not been anywhere near the spiralling nonsense down south. The average cost of a house in the North is €153,000,while down here it is €271,000.

The wealth effect of this divergence, driven by equity releases, has amplified the amount of credit in the Republic's system, thus pushing house prices up further.

Finally, because the public service accounts for almost half of all employees in the North, as opposed to 18 per cent here, there is less dynamism and innovation in the workforce, and arguably a lack of risk-taking, which itself affects the overall feeling of economic sterility. This, again, is reinforced by figures published last year in the European Journal of Social and Regional Studies, showing that, proportionately, there are twice as many self-employed people in the Republic as there are in the North.

But the economic balance sheet is not game, set and match to the Republic by any means. The quality of life for many in Northern Ireland is extremely high, its infrastructure is first class and the new workforce is well-educated. Its economy has been growing strongly - by British standards. Daily life in the North is not dominated by relentless commuting, childcare problems and rip-off prices. Its telecom infrastructure is advanced, its road system is superb and its air links, particularly from Belfast's expanded airport, are excellent. Huge stretches of former industrial wastelands have been regenerated, and there is a real feeling that things are on the right track. Unemployment is low, even if the jobs do not pay particularly well, while investment and confidence is rising.

However, it is still suffering a brain drain to Britain - particularly by young middle-class Protestants - and, as Peter Hain stated quite obviously, the Northern economy is not sustainable in its present form. By this, he was referring to the annual subvention the North receives from the British exchequer.

To put this figure into an all-Ireland context, the North, with its much smaller population, gets more subsidies in anyone year from Britain than the Republic did from the EU throughout the entire 1990s.

At some stage, the North must at least make some moves towards self-reliance.

We can help them in this process and, in turn, they can ease some of our congestion problems.

Belfast is the closest city to Dublin on the island of Ireland. It is the only one that has sufficient mass to act as a counterweight to the capital. It has the people, and they need our types of jobs. By 2007, with the completion of the final stretch of the Dundalk-Newry motorway, it will be only two hours away by car.

Geography demands that we wake up to the resource that is the North. We should help them to agitate Westminster for corporate tax breaks like ours, so that they can compete properly. They should be part of our sales pitch, not least because as we get too expensive, cheaper workers and better infrastructure in the North will become part of our unique selling point.

Reading all the antediluvian stuff about the North in the 1975 government papers over the past few days, one can't help but feel that the best way to condemn that nonsense to history is indeed to join hands and jump together - in economics, if not in politics. They need us and we need them. Now that we can afford it, it is time for us to be both far-sighted and generous.

I support the reunification of Ireland. It will be the greatest moment in the history of this island. Ireland is not 26 counties, it is 32 counties and always will be.

pbsuxok1znja4r

I can't believe so many people actually would want a UI at this stage. Half the people in the north wouldn't want it. UI will never happen, and I personally am not bothered in the least by that fact. My Grandaddy didn't fight for a UI and neither did my Dad's Grandaddy. Nor do I personally know anyone who's Grandaddy...etc etc...
In a generation or so, nearly everyone will be able to say this, and any lingering desire for a UI will have all but disappeared. Good riddance; just let it be.

Lump

I don't think a united Ireland will happen, but the question was, if there was a vote tomorrow what would you vote for. People say we couldn't afford it, but the people living in the north still pay taxes, and all the infra-structure is there already so it wouldn't be a massive cost.

Anyway, what ever about a united Ireland. I don't think the march should ever been allowed to happen. Look what happens when people living in the north march, what did they think was going to happen down here? Imagine if the IRA went and marched in London, balaclavaded up waving guns around.... I'm sure that'd pass peacefully.

Saying that, the fact that most of the people wrecked Dublin without getting near the march just goes to show how discracefull some people are, I am actually ashamed to be Irish at the moment, it's like the march gave the scumbags free reign to wreck the joint. They don't care about the politics, just like causing trouble. IMHO, they should take them all into Portlaoise Prision and tell some of the IRA boys what the scumbags had down, and leave them to take a beating

John

eirebhoy

scouser.tommy wrote:

I can't believe so many people actually would want a UI at this stage. Half the people in the north wouldn't want it.

And half the people would.

Cosine

Float away.

At this stage its the only choice IMO everything is so mixed up that one single goverment wont be able to cleanly take over up there. It the english get complete control (bearing in mind all the stuff SebtheBum was saying about Stormont etc) then the nationalists would kick up a bigger fuss and if it went the other way then the unionists would kick up the fuss.

Its a depressing thought but I can't see NI being resolved any time soon or maybe even ever

dSTAR

What about people who want the whole of Ireland become part of the United Kingdom (not that it will happen in this lifetime)?

Its not that unrealistic to expect two countries to share a common vision and for Irish people to recognise that the little rock they like to call Ireland (which is not much bigger than Tasmania!) is ACTUALLY part of the British Isles.

Flex

dSTAR wrote:

What about people who want the whole of Ireland become part of the United Kingdom (not that it will happen in this lifetime)?

Its not that unrealistic to expect two countries to share a common vision and for Irish people to recognise that the little rock they like to call Ireland (which is not much bigger than Tasmania!) is ACTUALLY part of the British Isles.

The whole of Ireland was in the United Kingdom aat one point and it generally wasnt a good experience for Ireland.

LookingFor

dSTAR wrote:

Its not that unrealistic to expect two countries to share a common vision and for Irish people to recognise that the little rock they like to call Ireland (which is not much bigger than Tasmania!) is ACTUALLY part of the British Isles.

There are much smaller independent states in Europe. You might as well start saying that Europe is just a (relatively) little province tacked on to Asia, that Australia is just a little island off Asia etc. etc. and make us all one big happy country. Heh, and maybe that'd be awesome and brilliant, but it's not going to happen, at least not in my lifetime.

I do think, though, that all of this argument is becoming increasingly redundant with the ever increasing integration of Europe. No wonder Sinn Fein is anti-Europe, it'd leave them nothing to argue against :rolleyes:

I wonder who named them the British Isles. My guess is the British.