Irish Current Affairs.

[Ballymagash Blue]

Also there's allegedly a lot of accounting irregularities on the broadcaster's books in relation to this and some tasty contracts handed out to friends and family of board members.
All while they insist people should pay them €160 a year even if they're a student in a bedsit with no TV and only a smartphone.

Yes. But that's nothing to do with Tubridy.

 

[aguero93:20]

Yes. But that's nothing to do with Tubridy.

Yeah more in regards to the scandal as a whole, which probably has a lot further to run since they can only have scratched the surface so far. Tubridy himself hasn't really done much wrong apart from the oxygen thievery.

 

[AlexWilliamsGloves]

Thanks mate. And I read that as very positive. My external view is that the Protestant politics in NI do feel marginalised somewhat but that could well be through a U.K. press view.
I thought one of the guys in the documentary described it that every day he ‘picked up his dad. one day in a small box, one day in a box so heavy. he couldn’t lift it’. So many lives touched for ever that any integration and reconciliation is progress and long may it continue.

Yeah I guess it is positive.

I don’t really see or hear much/anything related to sectarian troubles…in the old “them and us” sense. Criminality may get framed as falling under the banner of the UVF or UDA for example…but imo, that’s what it is, general criminality, drug dealing etc…essentially, gang warfare.
Now, there have been a couple of incidents relating to the new/continuity/pretend IRA….but it doesn’t feel like the campaigns of yesteryear.
There is the fear that Brexit and its fall out will embolden the paramilitaries, but thankfully nothing significant has happened, yet…but then again, we are still very much in limbo.

Do bear in mind, I’m sure there are others on here from NI who will have different opinions and experiences than me…but to me the Troubles(tm) feel a long time ago…with a tentative eye to the future.

 

[mancity2012_eamo]

Thanks mate. And I read that as very positive. My external view is that the Protestant politics in NI do feel marginalised somewhat but that could well be through a U.K. press view.
I thought one of the guys in the documentary described it that every day he ‘picked up his dad. one day in a small box, one day in a box so heavy. he couldn’t lift it’. So many lives touched for ever that any integration and reconciliation is progress and long may it continue.

I think Alex or perhaps OB are best positioned to answer the questions you put forward Sadds and Alex does regularly offer very honest and refreshing perspectives in here, when the subject arises.

From a southern perspective, I think you have raised very pertinent issues and ones I’ve raised myself, with family (I ve a 20 yo) and friends and colleagues alike.

The Troubles were like a condensed list of atrocities from both sides that were actually happening for centuries in our history and our dealings with England in particular, I won’t call it GB as we are going back at least to QE1 I would say.

I’m reading a very objective version of Irish history and although it has opened my eyes to how we were taught Irish history in a Christian Brother’s school, it has left me in no doubt of the cruelty, exploitation and mismanagement by successive English Regals and governments and the inevitability that The Act of Union of 1801 was never going to last here.

Looking at British government now and I sometimes scratch my head at how the likes of Scotland and the British working classes in general put up with the class system and what amounts to serfdom in your own history.

One difference I would like in how Irish history is taught now, is to have our events contextualised by what was happening in Europe and ‘Britain’ at the time and how our history is actually intertwined with the wider European religious wars.

I do worry that people here would rush to vote for a United Ireland without considering the Unionist position up north and how these people would be accommodated.

I was quite saddened by the attitude of people voting for Brexit that gave no consideration to a future for quite a large element of the UK.
NI and partition in the first place was a very poor solution, that was rushed perhaps to avoid more bloodshed ( how did that work out) but really was the culmination of a lack of democracy or democracy being flatly ignored by government.

But let’s not make the same mistakes over and over again.
Irish people voting for a 32 county Republic is just insane thinking in my view.
Whatever it is we vote for north and south will have to have the same spirit and inclusiveness of the GFA.
This is why I think it would be far more encouraging and optimistic if Britain were in favour of greater union in Europe rather than isolationism.
I can’t speak for all Irish people, just myself. But I always maintained that I knew exactly what I was voting for in the two referendums we had to change our constitution and ratify the terms of the GFA.
For me it wasn’t about forgetting the past but it was about leaving it behind and hopefully learning from it and us all agreeing a new framework for the future of the island. Whatever that future is people down here are going to have to accept that what happened to a Catholic minority at partition cannot be repeated to a unionist minority at reunification.

I do think a huge part of this is going to involve a greater political middle ground up north rather than the polarisation of DUP and Sinn Fein that we have now.

DUP see the writing on the wall with the Shinners now being the largest party, but they are being allowed play silly buggers with democracy and this should not be allowed happen if there ever is to be progress.
They never signed up to the GFA but benefited from it and are pissing on it at the same time.

 

[ob]

Yeah I guess it is positive.

I don’t really see or hear much/anything related to sectarian troubles…in the old “them and us” sense. Criminality may get framed as falling under the banner of the UVF or UDA for example…but imo, that’s what it is, general criminality, drug dealing etc…essentially, gang warfare.
Now, there have been a couple of incidents relating to the new/continuity/pretend IRA….but it doesn’t feel like the campaigns of yesteryear.
There is the fear that Brexit and its fall out will embolden the paramilitaries, but thankfully nothing significant has happened, yet…but then again, we are still very much in limbo.

Do bear in mind, I’m sure there are others on here from NI who will have different opinions and experiences than me…but to me the Troubles(tm) feel a long time ago…with a tentative eye to the future.

As someone who grew up with the worst of it but been away for 20 years and follow it from London but still got friends and family there that's basically how I see it now. Going back to me it feels like a very different place and much better place but to be honest I still have feeling that there are some still stuck in the past and who'd be more than happy to go back unfortunately and still think it simmers below surface in few areas

 

[Saddleworth2]

The Troubles were like a condensed list of atrocities from both sides that were actually happening for centuries in our history and our dealings with England in particular, I won’t call it GB as we are going back at least to QE1 I would say.

Scotland is not innocent. Wasn't it James 1 who organised the colonisaton of Ulster in 1606 which required the colonists to be English speaking and protestant hence the continuing links between Ulster and southern Scotland.

Looking at British government now and I sometimes scratch my head at how the likes of Scotland and the British working classes in general put up with the class system and what amounts to serfdom in your own history.

I cannot understand given what has happened in the last five or so years why any right minded Scot still supports the Union. We live in a country that has little say in how it is governed. Some union of equals.

I do worry that people here would rush to vote for a United Ireland without considering the Unionist position up north and how these people would be accommodated

It needs subtle and clever politicians who have the welfare of NI citizens as their touchstone. Or maybe just implement the Hong Kong solution - stay if you want and be Irish or come back to the UK where your ancestors came from. (I'm not being serious there mate but its probably more likely than finding subtle and honest politicians on both sides)

Irish people voting for a 32 county Republic is just insane thinking in my view.
Whatever it is we vote for north and south will have to have the same spirit and inclusiveness of the GFA.

See my answer above - who the hell could achieve this.

This is why I think it would be far more encouraging and optimistic if Britain were in favour of greater union in Europe rather than isolationism.

You know that I agree with you but here is as much chance of England voting to rejoin the EU as there is me being president of Scotland. Look at the political landscape there as Labour move increasingly right.

DUP see the writing on the wall with the Shinners now being the largest party, but they are being allowed play silly buggers with democracy and this should not be allowed happen if there ever is to be progress.
They never signed up to the GFA but benefited from it and are pissing on it at the same time.

So who is going to knock there heads together and get them to be responsible and sensible?

 

[Koniec]

Scotland is not innocent. Wasn't it James 1 who organised the colonisaton of Ulster in 1606 which required the colonists to be English speaking and protestant hence the continuing links between Ulster and southern Scotland.

My mum’s ancestors moved from NE Scotland in the 1600s to Co Londonderry. The links between NI and Scotland go back to even Robert the Bruce, he was Earl of Carrickfergus.

There was plenty of support for both sides of the troubles in Scotland, especially financially.

 

[Saddleworth2]

My mum’s ancestors moved from NE Scotland in the 1600s to Co Londonderry. The links between NI and Scotland go back to even Robert the Bruce, he was Earl of Carrickfergus.

There was plenty of support for both sides of the troubles in Scotland, especially financially.

When I moved back to east of Scotland from England in 1971 I could not believe how 'fierce' the loyalties ran.

 

[mancity2012_eamo]

My mum’s ancestors moved from NE Scotland in the 1600s to Co Londonderry. The links between NI and Scotland go back to even Robert the Bruce, he was Earl of Carrickfergus.

There was plenty of support for both sides of the troubles in Scotland, especially financially.

Although they weren’t discriminated against as badly as the 80+% Catholic population who had to endure the Penal Laws all the way up to the 1820’s,
Presbyterian Scottish planters were also treated badly and suffered from coercive laws geared to convert the country to Church of Ireland Protestantism.

It went on for centuries too. A reason a lot of pilgrims left and went to Nova Scotia.

When you think of the Act of Union of 1801, it’s a laughable title when you consider that over 80% of the population could not own land, could not vote and could not be a member of parliament.

Where was the representation for those in this apparent ‘Union’ ?

 

[depps]

He's been a bit tone deaf, maybe. But there's really nothing Tubridy can say that will satisfy the mob. Personally can't stand him, but what's he guilty of. Greed? Hypocrisy? Perhaps. But he doesn't deserve his life and career destroyed for what we've learned this past week. No one does.

How can he ever possibly be employed as journalist again when he supposedly didn't have enough probing insight to realise that RTE were understating his wages in their public disclosures... And that is the generous interpretation of this role in all of this.

He should, and hopefully will be, finished as a media personality in Ireland. Let him fuck off to wherever it was he was supposedly going to leave for the big bucks that meant RTE had to pay him those wages