Recruitment for British army soars in Republic of Ireland

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

i suppose if you read everything through a filter you can come to conclusions like that.

sigh, Just like the hurling of 'Shinners' when we see 'Filters' we know where we are at in the debate again. :rolleyes:

Fratton Fred wrote: »

he fat overweight and and liked a few drinks alright, but he was no coward.

He liked Collins, as he saw him as someone who was not too dissimilar. a selfless love of their country. It is easy to conclude that he hated Dev because he saw him as a coward who was only interested in becoming king.

He was a complete alcoholic.if he was irish this would habe been mentioned countless times to put him down.

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Because I believe it exists maybe?
Why else would you have somebody thinking that a man was somehow of better character because 'he admired a few Irish men'?

nobody said that. you just made it up.

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Well why was it offered in answer to a criticism of Churchill?

why was what offered? your made up, imagined response? Churchill like one particular irish person and didnt like another. that is all the post said. But to you that is somehow the sign of an inferiority complex.

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

why was what offered? your made up, imagined response? Churchill like one particular irish person and didnt like another. that is all the post said. But to you that is somehow the sign of an inferiority complex.

Because it was offered in answer to a criticism of him. What were we supposed to infer from it? Fred just felt like telling us this nugget for the sake of it?

If you have a problem with me inferring something well I am sorry again, that is what you do in a debate. Just because you don't see something or refuse to see it, doesn't apply to us all.

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Inferring <> Just making stuff up.

infer
ɪnˈfəː/Submit
verb
deduce or conclude (something) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements.

Wrong, must try harder.

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

the key words being evidence and reasoning. both were lacking in your post.

That is a matter of opinion, to which you are entitled, like everybody.

Anything else?

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

logic and reasoning are matters of fact not opinion.

Anything else?

Your recognition of them are in doubt. That's your problem not mine.

If Fred was just offering us his nugget of info for the sake of it, why did he quote the criticism of Churchill?

Fratton Fred wrote: »

He was accused of being a coward, which he wasn't. The comments about Collins and De Valera were to demonstrate how he thought.

He admired a man who was prepared to stand up and fight for his beliefs, even if those beliefs were not in keeping with his own, but less so of a man who ran away from confrontation and his behind others.

I could have given ther examples maybe, but those two seemed most relevant on an Irish forum.

Any cowards I know tend to revere brave men. It isn't neccesarily the recognition of a like mind.

Churchill didn't like DeValera because he was bested by him. Which indicates an entirely different type of personality. One that fits in with other aspects of what we know about him, his attitude to race, to people he saw as inferior by dint of birth and his general arrogance.

I have often wondered what state of ignominy and decrepitude, a people have been reduced to when an English gentleman feels unthreatened enough by them to be able to enjoy 'gallops around' shooting at 'savages'. Think about the actual reality of that for a minute.

Or somebody who when literally begged for food supplies (which he had) for starving Bengali's, answered that it was their own fault for 'breeding like rabbits' and that the famine was 'merrily culling the population'

'Coward' springs very quickly to mind, no?

* and please don't explain his racism away by saying it was the common attitude of the times, you might as well try to vindicate Hitler by saying anti-Semitism was common at the time.

Apropos of the general drift of the conversation.

Whenever I read this poem I conjure an image of Winston.

Base Details
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say -- "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die -- in bed.

Siegfried Sassoon

An antidote to the predatory aspirational ad stuff, maybe.

Jawgap wrote: »

Why?

Churchill was likely serving as a battalion commander on (a quiet sector of) the Western Front when Sassoon wrote this. So given he was literally and metaphorically in the trenches why would this poem have any relevance to him?

Eh, I think about/visualise Churchill?

'Balding (check) Fierce (check) Guzzling (check) Gulping (check) Puffy petulant face (check) speeding young men up the line to death(check) died in bed (check)

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Which doesn't in any way match up with Churchill's admiration for Collins now, does it?

Churchill disliked De Valera because he was a sniveling coward, he shat himself in Bolans mill, hid for the war of independence and didn't even have the balls to attend the treaty negotiations.

The only admirable thing about De Valera was that he managed to con an entire nation long enough to become president.

That's why you dislike Dev maybe. There is no doubt he stood up to Churchill's aggression and arrogance though. Churchill was angry about that. Bless him.

Fratton Fred wrote: »

when?

Churchill wanted Ireland in the war. Desperately enough to offer unity, twice.
Dev, not trusting him resisted.
Churchill had a broadside at 'Devil Era' (his pronunciation, the cheap bollix) in his victory speech and Dev replied:
"Mr Churchill makes it clear that, in certain circumstances, he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his action by Britain’s necessity,” de Valera said calmly.

“It seems strange to me that Mr Churchill does not see that this, if accepted, would mean that Britain’s necessity would become a moral code and that, when this necessity was sufficiently great, other people’s rights were not to count.

“If is quite true that other great powers believe in this same code — in their own regard — and have behaved in accordance with it. That is precisely why we have the disastrous successions of wars — World War Number One and World War Number Two — and shall there be World War Number Three?"

http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/when-eamon-de-valera-emerged-the-winner-in-the-battle-of-the-airwaves-330428.html

Generally regarded as a classic slap down of an arrogant bully. In circles that can think for themselves anyhow.