Do you believe that we in Ireland are now richer than those in the UK?

No Irish minister has ever said we pay the British to protect our airspace, do not be stupid.

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/irish-airspace-and-waters-remain-europes-open-flank

I am anyways. Sure I'm a billionaire. Can't speak for the rest of ye plebs.

I looked online but can't find a source. I remember it was said long time ago on RTE news or Prime Time, one of those type shows.

It's more than likely the Irish Government pay something towards it but aren't making the details public.

Quite the opposite. Russia would last a couple of days if they attacked the UK.

The UK spends something like £54.2 billion per year (that is over 60,000,000,000.00 euro ) on defence each year. You seem to think we contribute towards that but you have no idea if it is €100, a thousand or ten thousand or more. If you are making a claim please find somewhere online to back it up. I'm sure a certain party here would get very upset and create a lot of noise it we were in fact contributing to H.M. armed forces, so your claim is hard to believe.

I don't know if the Government pays the Brits or not and it will probaby never be made public anyway if they do but its a sad state of affairs that we don't even have one fighter plane to patrol our own airspace.

We throw hundreds of millions every year at tin pot corrupt countries in so called overseas aid but spend diddly squat on our own defence.

David McWilliams I think might be the first high profile economist to say the quiet part out loud about the situation the UK is in with the public finances. He thinks it's quite likely they'll have to enter an IMF program within the next couple of years.

London is a whole different country from the rest of the UK. In the summer I dropped in for a night on the way home from Italy. I caught the Stansted express and changed at Tottenham Hale to get the underground. There were shocking scenes of deprivation and filth. Elderly people searching through bins, a tent in front of the station with a middle aged man half out of it lying among a litter of take away cartons while starlings helped themselves to the leftovers and the whole area heavily littered. It was an eye opener for me and I couldn't get away fast enough.

I don't get the "London is whole different from the rest of the country"

As far as I can see you are making the point Tottenham (London) was a kip.

How is therefore different from the rest of the country?

We might think tottingham is a kip but people from there might think Burnley is a kip in comparison.

What we take for granted is still amazing to others. It took three years of living in desolate outback Australia to really appreciate how restorative and beautiful the greenery we have is.

Plus another thing I took for granted in the past is actually how colourful our towns can be, even if they're a bit run down compared to the uniform red brick of industrial Britain. There's whole new apartment blocks all around Britain that had to use red brick so as to not upset the industrial heritage look!!

David McWilliams shouldn't be throwing stones in glasshouses.

If it wasn't for our corporation tax racket, Ireland wouldn't be in any better of a position than the UK. Ireland collected €28bn in corporation tax last year while the UK collected €111bn. They collected about 4x more than us, but they have a population that is 13x larger.

If the rest of the world were to ever force a halt to the racket we've got going on, it'd be Ireland that was in need of IMF assistance.

colourful and fragrant. That’s certainly the phrases that spring to mind when I’m stepping over sleeping bags and trying not to choke on the smell of piss and vomit when I walk to the office from Connolly station.

Our countryside is beautiful, I love my spin around the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, it is stunning, but get out of the towns and cities in England and they have some equally stunning countryside and venture into wales and Scotland and you really get into the “breathtaking” area.

The UK economy is in decline Brexit was a mistake it makes it expensive and complicated for companys to trade with eu country's . Local council are having to cut back on basic services because they are short of money The labour governments policy is to talk about growth by lossening up regulations on planning and building and announcing a new runway .it takes 10 years to build a runway which is financed partly by extra tax's on airlines . The eu is in decline it's trying to compete with China who can make cheap electric cars .china has announced a new free deepseek ai app which is free . Brexit has damaged the UK economy while not stopping 1000s of illegal migrants from arriving on boats . Ireland is booming because we have an open economy in the eu with close ties to American tech company's .

London is doing ok because theres a lot of rich people living there and it has the financial industry . The problem with raising tax's is it encourages rich people to leave the UK

Yes theres loads of loopholes to avoid paying tax,s but the rich spend money in cafes restaurants and they employ people who pay tax on their salarys