NI Dec 22 Assembly Election

You do know a 'Border vote' is a poll of all the people on both sides of that border, not just those on the border?

What is wrong with a Border Poll as a way of finding out what a majority want to do?

As we have learned in the South, create the proper conditions, separate Church and State and sectarianism all but disappears in a generation.

This is very interesting, but the figures need a bit of unpacking.

First, are we talking about true Alliance second preferences — i.e. the votes of people who voted: 1 Alliance, 2 some other party? Or are we talking about Alliance next effective preferences — i.e. when Alliances candidates are elected/eliminated, where does the surplus/do the votes go? I suspect the latter, if only because that is much, much easier to establish from published election count results. This will include lots of people who voted e.g. 1 X, 2 Alliance, 3 Y, 4 Z.

This matters because, by this method, you won't measure any preferences for parties that are eliminated before the Alliance candidate is elected or eliminated. In the example just given, if the candidate of party Y has already been eliminated, the next effective preference is for party Z, and that's what will be recorded. Which means that Green/Alliance preferences in favour of other minor parties are likely to be undercounted, since they are more likely to be eliminated early in the count.

Secondly, conspicuously omitted from the graph above is any information about next effective preferences to other non-aligned parties, and about non-transferable votes. I'd really like to see fully-amplified figures showing all of the Alliance and Green next effective preferences.

But, yeah. The big picture hear is very striking. It really punctures the view that moderate unionists, pissed of with the DUP/TUV shenanigans and viewing UUP as basically useless, are registering their protest by voting Alliance. It suggests that there isn't a big cohort of "silent unionists" whose basic unionism is masked by voting Alliance or Green.

The reason I'd like to see full details is that, if we saw a significant chunk of Alliance votes going to the Greens (or vice versa), that could point to disaffected unionists who are voting successively for various non-aligned parties and then transferring back to unionist parties. Whereas if we see a large chunk of Alliance votes or Green votes being non-transferrable, that's very worrying for unionists.

How about a process of acknowledgment of the hurt done to each other before any such pole. I attended something last night where we were give a flavour of what happened to the Protestant community along the Fermanagh border. There was not a dry eye in the house and it was only a little insight ahead of a full presentation to come. The pain and trauma is awful. I realise there were catholic communities who also suffered that I need to hear and understand more.

I have felt since 1998 that there should be a museum or holocaust type experience A walk through. Where you must go through each section to get out and sections should be created by communities/actors eg section on suffering by Catholic community / Protestant community / security forces / mainland % europe / etc.

maybe then we could acknowledge the horror visited on the other side by us.

if those in roi were sensible they would not contemplate taking us on until some of this was dealt with.

I actually don't think it is a bad idea at all, so long as groups don't try to make it into a competition of who suffered the most; focus on acknowledgment of hurt and healing, not blame.

Similar was proposed for the old Long Kesh site over 15 years ago.....but since Martin McGuinness favoured the idea, Jim Allister had to object. Anything acknowledging any wrongdoing towards the CNR community would make it a Provo shrine in his eyes.

Keeping people like him (from either side) away from decision making for something like this would be crucial.

You can acknowledge without the need for museums.

She took a lot of criticism for the 'no alternative' comment but I think in the whole quote of what she said, MoN has acknowledged that what happened was awful for all.

Do we hear this from Unionists who are meeting with the LLC? I don't think we do yet tbh.

By the same token, if supporters of NI were sensible wouldn't they see doing this as an absolute priority if NI is to become anything like a normal political entity that enjoys the assent of the communities that live in it?

The kind of truth-telling as a foundation for reconciliation that you speak of here does seem to me to be absolutely foundational for any kind of democratic stability and normality in NI, whether NI is in the UK or the Republic. But I'd be very reluctant to defer political progress until it had happened, not least because political progress may be a necessary condition for it to happen.

After all, we should ask ourselves this: why hasn't it already happened?

Nail on head!

I find it disappointing that people need to try to use even this idea to have a go at the state. I would just like everyone to see a honest portrayal of the pain of the conflict and get some reality of what their own side done.

It will never happen, full stop. Not just the Brits won’t do it.

and tbh I wouldn’t expect any of the players to do it. The simple solution is that the victims tell their story and the suffering is portrayed

The funny thing is that sometimes the victims became the perpetrators. You can't be selective on which voices you think are worth hearing.

Young boy's father killed by the British Army he grows up and joins the Provos, kills a retired UDR man.....UDR man's son grows up and joins the UVF etc.

You can switch the order about if you think I'm trying to make a point with the specific order of that hypothetical, but my point is that victimhood is a grey area.

I think Fionn made the point rather excellently above, we can either keep spinning the roundabout or stop and get off.