Northern Ireland - how do you perceive it?

Is that what you imagine?🙄

As long as that's what's in your imagination, that's alright. Right?

I've been twice mainly in and around the Belfast area. Once for a few days and once for a week. This was about 20 yrs ago. My friends dad was from there. We stayed with his family. He grew up in an area that was right at the peace walls. He drove us there and it was quite shocking to see. The family didn't live there now and the area they lived in was very nice but still a bit random to walk down a nice street and then see a wall murual on the side on a house!

The pavements in some areas were painted red then white then blue on repeat and lots of union jack flags and red hands of Ulster, paramilitary messages and motos on the side of buildings like a kfc. I was a bit like wtf 😳

There are also random differences I had no idea about until recently. Like I have another friend that lives in Donegal and she always referred to Derry and my other friend called it Londonderry. I then started calling it Derry too and my other friend was like NO it's Londonderry! This is where I learned that you can tell whether someone is catholic or Protestant based on what they call it 😂

The city centre wasn't like that and was perfectly lovely and felt safe.

The "Brits" would probably have been quite happy to wash their hands of the island entirely.

Another example that just doesn't make sense to me @Hazelplayer

This confuses me @HazelPlayer.

You seem to consider only the people of GB as British or 'Brits' and not to include any of the people of NI in that category?

The 2021 census showed that 42.8% of NI residents identify as British ( alone or with other identities). By comparison 33.3% identified as Irish (alone or with other identities ).

Yet you repeatedly speak of the 'Brits' like they're located elsewhere and not in NI at all. You seem to separate the 'Brits' from the 'people in the region'.

I don't understand why?

Visited a few times last year as DC was considering Queens Belfast. Lovely city and did a trip to giants causeway. Very reasonably priced. If anyone has a dc coming up to university age well worth a look as they pay £100 to GB students going to open day (and offer a good package to GB students with a £3000 scholarship yr1)

Yes, but you're not accepting that the experience of the OP and other posters (like me) who are experiencing a different reality? And I am so glad about that. I have a relative who teaches in a school in a deprived community in Belfast, and it's utterly shocking some of the shit the kids come out with - and that's what they are brought up to believe! It's actually sad and disheartening.

Sure, we may live in more affluent areas perhaps but my god, it all has to start somewhere!

Well it annoys me every June when the flags start going up on the main roads. I don't get to have a say and I don't want any flag!!

I'm always agog in parts of north and west Belfast, where one street has one variety of 'fleg' and the next one has the other!!

That's 25 years past now. NI is a very different place thank God!

I dislike all the flags equally. I think they are so tacky. Thankfully putting flags out on people's houses seems to have reduced quite significantly. There's not a single one where I live any more.

I just think they're a bit like a dog marking its territory!

My dad is from NI, so we visited most years in the 80s. My family all lived in very quiet suburban areas- certainly no flags or murals or anything, apart from the accents you wouldn’t have known you weren’t in England. And they very much distanced themselves from the Troubles. It wasn’t talked about all that much, and if it was someone would quickly say “aye, well, what can ye do” and change the subject. Obviously we were very aware of the heavy security at the airports, but we were never taken into Belfast centre so didn’t see roadblocks or anything.

I have no issues with people living in areas that fly flags of any variety. I have great sympathy for most of them as they're frequently stuck in economic traps and don't actually want the flag on the lamppost outside their house but they don't have a choice in the matter.

I have little time for anyone who chooses to fly the flags or thinks they're in any way benign. We both know they aren't.

I avoid areas with flags flying because of the higher likelihood of coming across the kind of lowlife I prefer to avoid, and because I'm privileged enough to be able to avoid said areas.

It's not just the big Belfast grammars that are mixed. I went to a rural one over 40 years ago and it had a decent mix even then.

I think it's more of a thing in the controlled sector rather than CCMS schools.

I loved Belfast and found the various museums really interesting (and sobering). To be fair I'm English and 40 - things like the attempted assassination in 1991 happened when I was only 7 and I don't remember much news before the Good Friday Agreement.

I'm from Glasgow and have a lot of NI family, as is fairly common here.

Family live near Larne, so spent a lot of time there in the late 90s/early 00s on holiday.

Recently visited Belfast for a work conference for the first time in about 15 years and was SUPER impressed: town centre looks amazing and lots of cool shops and restaurants etc.

I'm very fond of the place and I think it's a shame that people allow their preconceptions to put them off visiting, especially Belfast (which IMO is much better and considerably more affordable than Dublin!).

I would imagine they rarely express such a wish.

For obvious reasons.

But anyway, it's important to acknowledge that that would be in both unionist and nationalist/republican communities.

Loads of decent people live in areas with flags flown.

And often their wish to not have flags flown in their area or outside their houses are met with intimidation and aggression.

Also, if a poster comes on and states that the "Brits" stole the 6 counties from them, and conveniently "forgets" that millions of people in the region did not want to become citizens of the then new Irish state, and still don't, you can't seriously expect everyone to just leave it standing.

You started the debate around sectarianism.by stating that young people in NI now don't care about religion or community ..... I answered, as did several others, that that was not my experience, at all.

That's incredibly simplistic.

Loads of decent people live in areas with flags flown.

Do you think they go around every door with a nice little survey and politely ask if they agree to flags being put up in their area.

The only way you definitively know that someone, personally, wants a flag up, is when they install a flag pole on their own house, and put one (or more) up. (Which you do see).

Anyway, if it's only knuckle draggers, then it's knuckle draggers on both sides of the conflict.

Interesting how MN posters oy ever seen to comment on unionist flags.

I don't particularly care which flag is flown in truth @HazelPlayer . The correlation between flegs on lampposts and knuckle draggers (in your words) is so high it's practically 1.

Every country has bigots. I don't know why it's necessary to spend pages and pages focusing on NI's when there is so much else worth talking about. Jenny from Essex isn't likely to accidentally end up walking around Ardoyne wearing her Union Jack dress is she.

I imagine you’re not distinguishable by your accent, though

To the contrary, the time I was questioned by the young man in a pub in Derry and then pointed at from above while shouting "she"s a Hun, we have a Hun here!" was because of my accent.

He said "you're not from Derry". I said"I am". He then asked where, I then answered him saying a small (mostly unionist) village on the edge of Derry, he then started shouting about me being a "Hun".

Also, if you had any real convo with someone they'd ask your name and that is usually identifying.

I’d been called Catholic McSouthernCatholic

Lol.

Is it Sorcha O'Mahoney?

I imagine you’re not distinguishable by your accent, though. Mine made me stand out as ‘not from around here’ in NI, and back in the ‘checkpoints all over’ days, my name couldn’t have been more obviously Catholic if I’d been called Catholic McSouthernCatholic. Ironically, or not so ironically, I was most often in NI visiting a friend who used to come and stay with DH and I in Oxford to avoid the height of the marching season. She left for England, and her parents for Dublin, which is why I have been in so long. I’d like to go back to NI.