Forging a new Union with the UK

LuciusPax wrote: »

OP you seem to be making the assumption that just because an Irish person doesn't want to 'rejoin' the UK that they are immediately a backward Anglophobe who seems to endlessly dwell on how nasty the English are, and how awful their '800 years of tyranny' was. That simply is not the case. The idea of the Irish turning to the English government and saying 'sorry lads we made a mess of our independence, will you take us back? pretty please' is a bizzare one. As many have mentioned Ireland, in terms of it's own independence, is a relatively young nation and so assuming that we have an inherent inability to govern ourselves because of the current economic debacle is a little extreme, and a tad myopic..

But it's NOT just the current crisis is it? Every government we've had has been one disaster after another, filled with local gombeen teachers, publicans and lawyers PLAYING statesmen - the stakes are just a lot higher these days, as it's not just our economy we're wrecking, we put the EU at risk too - hence being forced into the bailout. Let's not forget the corruption, nepotism, outright theft that goes on by ALL parties and members too. In fact, I challenge you to name ONE Irish government leader in modern times we can be proud of.

It's not just government either. Take Anglo as a prime example, or in fact ANY Irish-owned/run company you've ever had to deal with. everything is run on the "ah shure it'll be grand approach" when in reality things are FAR from "grand" with the service/value offered by them.

Then you have the Irish people.. obsessed in the "good times" with keeping up with their neighbours new BMWs and holidays, now they sit behind the curtains peering out and wondering what those neighbours might be "getting away with" that they're not. We only object to such things because deep down we wish we had the balls/neck to do so ourselves - our admiration of the "cute hoor" is well known, as is our "ah shure they have little to be doing" attitude to anyone we know being held to account on fraud/strokes etc.

Let's not forget that the first thing we did with our hard-won Independence was trade "the Brits" for the Church - a institution which abused and robbed generations of Irish people and held the social development of the country back for decades.

Then when that influence finally started to diminish, what did we do? We sold our newly rediscovered "freedom" to the EU.. and we know how well that's worked out in the last few years don't we!

The facts are that the Irish seem to have an inherent need to be told what to do as we're incapable of doing things in the interest of the greater good or even just competently in many cases. Maybe that's because of the relative "youth" of the Irish nation, maybe it's because we HAVE spent so many hundreds of years being told what to do.. but either way, it's very obvious that when we ARE let at the controls, chaos and disaster follows!

As for the rejoining the UK argument. I'm in favour of exploring our options yes. I think we have a lot more in common with our immediate neighbours than the rest of the EU and I think we'd get a better deal than we currently are and that we might see some real changes and improvements.

The poll results are no surprise of course, but they do seem to show that thankfully the knee-jerk nationalism is starting to wane and that there are an increasing number of Irish people out there willing to look at ALL of our options with a mature and open mind anyway.