Something I found incredibly interesting...
My Belfast born, Republican, Irish mate said to me tonight ‘you know those other cunts in Belfast’ (meaning unionists) ‘they think you’ve absolutely fucked them, do you know that?’.
I found it quite sobering, considering who this lad is.
Out of context but still rather pertinent, here's Edward Carson (December 1921) saying what he thinks of the British government's treatment of Ulster. He mentioned how the PM got the newspapers singing the same chorus of support, then summed up how he felt.
"What a fool I was. I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power. And of all the men in my experience that I think are the most loathsome it is those who will sell their friends for the purpose of conciliating their enemies, and, perhaps, still worse, the men who climb up a ladder into power of which even I may have been part of a humble rung, and then, when they have got into power, kick the ladder away without any concern for the pain, or injury, or mischief, or damage that they do to those who have helped them to gain power."
And on getting an international treaty changed without proper consideration and consent this also seems apposite:
"...that is all put down, cut and dried, with the King's assent, without the country having the slightest opportunity of passing a verdict upon it, and without the terms being even examined in the way that we were accustomed in the old days to examine proposals of political Parties when they were brought forward."
