How can we integrate Unionism into a possible United Ireland?

You can scroll back and see clearly what Tom claimed and what you backed up. Both demonstrated to be nonsense

I'm fully aware of it - more aware than you, it seems, since you were somehow under the impression that a knowledge of Irish was required for recruitment into the guards or entry into the Civil Service in 1923, which was not so in either case, as you would have realised if you thought about the practicalities of the situation for more than a few seconds.

Its a flat-out lie to say that there was ever "enhanced pay for Catholics who were schooled in Irish over Presbyterians who were not". In the Irish public service allowances for any specified skill or competence have always been paid without regard to religion or denomination. You'd have to be mindlessly bigoted to imagine otherwise.

downcow has been fed this info and swallowed it whole and unfiltered, like many unionists. He keeps coming up with nuggets of stereotypes and inventions.

'We're still hanging in there' is a pretty low bar compared with Craig's projections. As I posted already

It is indeed interesting to compare the two. You're boasting that your statelet has managed to survive, while by any reasonable measure Ireland has thrived.

By the expectations James Craig clearly had, NI is clearly an unmitigated failure, relatively speaking.

Wrong wrong and wrong.

I believe I did not say anything about 1923. I was clear that it related to my father’s time. I’d be very old if he was looking for a job in 1923. Indeed he wasn’t even born then.

civil servants also got extra pay for speaking Irish. Catholics were generally much more proficient than Presbyterians in speaking Irish due to schooling. To suggest that is not discriminatory is fairly ridiculous.

But even your last post is a massive move from your claim that there was not discrimination in recruitment to the civil service based on Irish

Are you also saying that there wasn’t preferential treatment for Irish speakers in the civil service including enhanced pay?

Arrogance? You're the one who was boasting that NI had made it to 106 years....I just said that's a pretty low bar for success and certainly falls short of the relative Utopia Craig predicted when he said future historians should compare the two.

By any standards outside of flegs and parading, Ireland has been a much greater success over the period since Craig called for comparison.

Aside from sarcastic rhetoric, you have completely failed to address the comparison that your historic Craig called for us to make.

I'm fully aware of the freedom to move from North to South.....I did so and have a much more prosperous life for having done so. I suppose you'll ignore the well documented brain drain that NI has continued to suffer both South and East as well. No matter how many educated young people get a taste of life outside NI and decide never to return, as long as you can point out that EVERYONE hasn't left, you can keep your ostrich act up and pretend life is peachy and NI is a great success.

It wasn't done to discriminate against 'Protestants' downcow, it was done to try and rescue the native language wiped out by the colonial powers, the same as all colonists did.

Many protestants could speak and read Irish, all my wifes grandparents did and one wrote in the language to some acclaim in a certain field.

Your victimhood is getting the better of facts again.

There you go again with the myth.

It was not done to discriminate.

I am not justifying, because there is no need to justify.

Non Catholics were allowed to rise to the top of professions and the government here, although there were isolated incidents of discrimination.

WTF is the vainglorious 'downcow was right/you are in shock' nonsense about? 😁

There is cultural protectionism in Quebec and Wales also. Obviously some people are favoured over others but its not a recognised category of discrimination since technically anyone can learn one, two or several languages if they care to.

My father said that DeValera had packed the civil service with his cronies. It was seen by some as favouring the West over Dublin/Leinster.

I knew an Englishman in Wales who was bitter that his career had stalled. He considered a requirement to learn Welsh absurd.

Well there's an obvious answer if you give it a moment of thought; because we would like better for our fellow countrymen.

You're still not addressing the point, you're just hand waving it away because you can't without admitting that by any reasonable standard, in the time since Craig called for future historians to make the comparison until now, Ireland has been a much greater success than NI.

Your point about wanting to maintain their better quality of life in NI is at odds with pretty much any metric by which quality of life is measured: when North and South are compared, Ireland has a better quality of life. It is fine if you have cultural or emotional ties that make you want to remain part of the UK, it's fine if you have concerns about how your community would be welcomed in a United Ireland, or at the potential for violence to break out. I may disagree with those, but they're your opinions, you're entitled to them! You can't just make sh*t up and try to suggest one of the most disadvantaged parts of the UK has a better quality of life than one of the wealthiest parts of Europe.

You don't get, 'pushed off' threads, Downcow. You repeatedly break rules and ignore mod warnings on threads until the mods ban you from them. Even though I think many of those threads are worse for not having your input (as much as that may surprise you), you perfectly exemplify your victim complex right there. It isn't YOUR fault that you repeatedly broke the rules, it's everyone else's fault.

…as for not getting pushed off threads. You are now demonstrating a little bit of what francie was in his last post.

I have received significant support in PMs from those who oppose my views on threads.

So let’s say your view on this is not unanimous

Wealth is one factor, of course. Trying to pretend economic security is a sad goal.....well that's just idiotic. Find me the person who says they'd be happier if they had to worry about paying the bills and putting food on the table!

Then you'd have obvious things like safety, healthcare, political stability/corruption, education, general social stability, life expectancy, access to services (some of this I found better in NI, some down here), cost of living (NI would be ahead on this one), social mobility (I'd imagine similar in both, but I haven't looked into it).

Your attempt to hedge your bet on NI emigration would work if we were comparing the UK overall to Ireland overall, but we're comparing the NI region specifically (a region you consistently tell us is a country). Should we exclude all IE to EU migration, since Ireland is part of the EU too? You've added this little snippet in because you're well aware NI has a serious brain drain issue with kids leaving for University and never coming back.

Immigration would probably be a better indicator of a region as a pull factor. Though I don't have numbers to hand on that, I'd be quite certain that Ireland attracts much greater Immigration (even measured per capita) than NI due to the vastly superior level of industry here. You might think wealth is a pretty sad thing to measure quality of life on, but economic strength is undoubtedly a huge migration pull factor.

How do YOU measure quality of life in such a way that you think NI comes out better? Number of flegs? Orange parades? Days without a functioning government? Number of times you've been screwed by the Tory Party?