Why I'll say no to a united ireland

You are conveniently forgetting the evil that the british unleashed on the world

Interesting note over on the RVM recycling cans thread - that someone got beer with logos on it in NI. So they both picked up cheaper due to MU pricing AND can get money back on the cans down south without paying the deposit!

That's a serious win win for traders across the border. If they can acquire stocks of products with return logo and sell it to southerners, it's win, win, win big time. They get loads extra business and we get extra cash back. Whooppeeeee.

A rep of motor fuels in Ireland was predicting similar the other day for petrol & diesel sales. That between scheduled excise duty increases and carbon taxes down south here that there'll be a seriously attractive price differential soon north of the border. God bless the border!

I have never denied that there has been wrong on all sides. But is it unusual that I focus on the biggest killing machine and the one that was aimed at my community?

Would you be surprised if Ukrainians focused on Russian atrocities rather than Ukrainian atrocities?

Era give back the 26 as you're at it

And the census would show a decline in the Protestant % of the population along the border in N. Ireland.

Sometimes I wonder what planet you are from Francie, I really do. Look at the schools in, for example, Co Fermanagh. AFAIK the only "protestant" ( for want of a better term) secondary school now in Co. Fermanagh is in Enniskillen.

As I said (and i am not sure if you read that or not) , you do not ask someone from those who done or sympathised with the "ethnic cleansing" if there was such a policy or not: you ask the community who suffered: and if you google it, you will see countless reports that many people in Fermanagh and other border counties did think there was intimidation and an attempt at "ethnic cleansing" along the border. Ask any farmer 2, 5 or 10 miles inside the border and they will tell you of such and such a farm, such and such a farm etc changing hands since the troubles started.

Did you not say FAIR was unionist or am I mistaken?

May I point out to you that Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR) is a non-governmental organisation founded in 1998 in Co Armagh, and it describes itself as a "non-sectarian, non-political organisation" that works "in the interests of the innocent victims of terrorism in South Armagh."

And you give out about others labelling?

How do you know the political persuasion of the victims of terrorism / why do you label them all as unionists? If you are a catholic I would say you could be welcome to join if you were a victim. Do not forget there were plenty of catholic victims of the pIRA alone as well. Many would be of the opinion more Catholics were killed by Republicans than there were Catholics killed by the security forces. And there were lots of catholic members of the security forces too killed by the pIRA. Yet you label FAIR as unionist, and do not condemn those who attacked the journalist and called him "an Orange Bastard".

But you think the Catholic established, with Catholic Clergy as trustees, youth club in Downpatrick, is multi-cultural.

Your hypocrisy knows no bounds. It is very difficult to take you utterances seriously, as you lack credibility now.

Even though living standards and technology etc have improved so much in most countries in the world in the past 3 or 4 decades, only six in 10 Germans overall see reunification as a success, according to a YouGov survey of 2,034 people. More than eight in 10 people in the former East Germany consider reunification incomplete, even after all these decades, and one in three see it as a failure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/03/world/europe/east-west-germany-30-anniversary.html

Suppose away.

But again, it is a false equivalence.

Terrorists don't have a duty of care to anyone, they are terrorists.

The British state murdering its own unarmed and innocent people and refusing to prosecute is something else entirely. Do you genuinely not see this?

I struggle to think how this doesn't terrifying every right minded British person.

But of course, if you have the frame of mind that those people deserved it, I can see how it wouldn't bother you too much.

I'd highlight that some of the most severe argument on the thread is coming from two people on this side of the border....so hardly a grand sweeping indictment of potential Unification.

If you're waiting for everyone holding hands in a circle singing Kum Bay Ya, well unfortunately the world you want doesn't and will never exist, Blanch.

So thats the limits of the discussion - I don't care about the others and their violence, I'm pointing my finger at 'our' problem child only.....Yet you have the temerity to bemoan limited back and forth. You either want to recognise the conflict or you want to revert to your status of "but the IRA, but the IRA".

The IRA could possibly have been ghosts of the past had the civil rights not been met with immediate violence. The first utterance of wanting equality was met with immediate assembly of Unionist militia ready to use violence rather than peaceful discussion....

You question the principle of "violence begets violence" as mundanely as "The had other peaceful options" yet never question the Unionist rush to arms and violence from the outset.

Well in this worry charade, let me fill you in. The British are equivalent to the Russian side, even down to starving the populace - read a history book. And you will find they are by far and away the biggest killing machine this island has ever seen.

Again its convenient for you to draw a line in the sand, and say it was a long time ago or doesn't matter, but the actions and activities of the British here gave rise to the IRA, and are massively to blame in creating the situation your community found itself in.

The schoolyard excuse of "they made me do it" doesn't wash. There was never any justification for what the PIRA did. As they achieved precisely zero, I don't even see why some even try to construct a false justification.

Huh?

The PIRA achieved precisely zero, unless you count the dead men, women and children as achievements, the lives destroyed by punishment beating and kneecappings as achievements, the economic desolation of Northern Ireland as an achievement etc.

List off the accomplishments of the PIRA, if you can.

I have read more history books than you have probably had hot breakfasts. Do not believe everything you were indoctrinated at school about the famine, it is lot more biased than even FrancisBrady's version of the troubles which was much more recent.

The famine was certainly was not deliberate genocide. It was caused by huge population growth in the few generations before that, reliance on one crop, the potato blight etc. Do not forget that even in 1847, statistics show the British imported more food in to Ireland than exported food. In 1847, at the height of the Famine, Ireland exported 39,000 tonnes of wheat, and 98,000 tonnes of oats , and imported 199,000 tonnes of wheat, 12,000 tonnes of oats and 682,000 tonnes of maize. The food imported did not evaporate.

So stop harking back to the famine, it was not as simple as you believe.

For a small cadre of ill-trained terrorists with limited arms/resources they forced a professional armed force to undertake extremely costly decisions in relation to movement and patrols in a very small area. Even the UK government reports noted them as being  "professional, dedicated, highly skilled and resilient"

Brighton bombing was astounding from the viewpoint of how close they got to killing Thatcher. Do I think it was in anyway admirable, no, Killing Thatcher (despite my opinion of her) would have lit a tinder box of retribution. However when you look at what they carried out, it is astounding for a small group to have gotten so close.

Military attacks on British army bases were reviewed post event and forced them to rethink their strategies. I cant recall which one but I need to look to reverify; A British officer commented on their ability to "Press home" the attack. (I need to reconfirm the wording but its the gist of it)

EDIT 2: Take Warrenpoint - Gen. James Glover Commander of British forces in Northern Ireland, later said it was "arguably the most successful and certainly one of the best planned IRA attacks of the whole campaign". I doubt he used the word 'successful' deriving any admiration for the reasoning behind it but was able to look at it objectively

There's a book on the IRA bombing manufacturing capabilities - "IRA: The Bombs and the bullets" That looks at how a small organisation achieved "the level of deadly improvisation that became the hallmark of the Provisional IRA’s expertise and the ingenuity in its pioneering IED timing, delay and disguise technologies, and follows the arms race it carried on with the British Army"

Do I admire these achievements for the wanton destruction, deaths and prolongation of the conflict - No. The can be looked at objectively, without any green/orange tinting.

The army even conceded that they never beat the IRA, however it did bring them to a stalemate. Not many militant/terrorist organisations get to say that against the might of The British Army.

Edit: Even small things that you wouldn't have seen on the news were due to IRA activity. The checkpoints that we face at times in one locality; The original placing meant there were few alternatives to going through it, local volunteers attacked it a few times and it was moved (they'd placed it near a blind bend so surprise was easy) These were small time populist 'wins' that never get notoriety as no one died, and of the thousands of check points, who's going to report on a few being moved a mile down the road.