Differences (rep Ireland) Irish V UK

You don't think so, which is fine, obviously. Other people may beg to differ.

Should people not state a preference for doing things a certain way for fear of suggesting that doing something different is "worse" in some way?

The world would be very boring if we kept all our opinions to ourselves! Mumsnet in particular just wouldn't exist - or it would just be an echo chamber of everyone sharing the same opinion expressed in the OP.

If Irish people were here saying that the rest of the world should change certain things because it's done differently (or better as people seem to assume) in Ireland I could understand the defensiveness but we're not.

Are people actually holding up the Irish way as the better way? I can see some people have said that the way we deal with death is "better" and I don't necessarily agree that it is better. But I think the way we deal with death and funerals just speaks to different cultural norms around death and community and there is something uniquely Irish about it.

Everyone thinks their way is better, if they thought a different way was better they would do things differently. 🤷‍♀️

difference is fine "My way is better" not fine.

Because when Irish customs and ways of doing things are presented as the best way of doing things, its going to put people's backs up.

And the first woman elected to Westminster was an Irish woman elected in Ireland, Constance Markievicz, in 1918.

I think we can both appreciate the wonderful in Ireland and accept that there have been awful things we've inflicted on our people and continue to do so. Women and children have been particularly mistreated and I have found myself very angry about this at times.

There is nowhere on this earth that is perfect and nobody here has suggested that Ireland is a utopia or, indeed, better than the UK. People are pointing out some interesting differences and raising hypothesese about why that might be the case. The UK is great and Ireland is great. Some people have pointed out things they prefer about Ireland but that doesn't mean that it's "better" than the UK - it's only a personal preference of that particular poster. People tend to prefer things they are familiar with so it's not unexpected that Irish people will prefer the way they do weddings or funerals. Threads like this will always have more Irish people commenting because it's about our country and what a lot of us share are cultural norms slightly different to many parts of the UK.

Yes it is. The Irish Free State gave equal voting rights to all men and women in 1922, so it was a few years ahead of the UK in that regard, but not many,

I’ve just realised the UK only gave certain women rights to vote until 1928 so that’s probably the answer!

Yes abortion is very recent here, because a majority of people voted against it in referendums. I am pro choice but culturally a lot of irish people are still anti abortion, and not just Catholic or older people either.

They are indeed. Absolutely heartbreaking

How can Ireland have given the vote to women when women had the vote in 1918 and ROI didn’t become independent until 4 years later? Not being facetious BTW!

I think @LayerCakeOfStrangers put €20 in a card when she was at her nieces wedding in Kerry last year and now she has the sinking realisation that she has made a social faux pas and is feeling defensive.

Maybe because people were keeping it light - hearted and humorous!

Irish women certainly don’t ignore the way women have been treated in Ireland. But thanks so much for your lovely show of solidarity.

Violence against women today in both the UK and Ireland is too high. You’re a bit confused about the legislation that was passed last year, it about all about protecting victims identity.

Yes it is. I don’t think it sounds better because the fundamental core important things about life that go behind the doors of a restaurant, such as women’s rights, are really poor in Ireland compared to the U.K.

Just my opinion.

I’m aware laundries were also in the UK but they close around 30 years earlier than the last one in Ireland. Similarly, abortion rights were 50 years later.

Magdalene laundries may well have continued had the uncovering of a mass grave not happened in 1993. I don’t think the Catholic Church had a sudden moral epiphany.

In the case of anonymity, so many adults have come out about the abuse at the hands of George Gibney. Before they’d be anonymised in court but now he will be too.

I didn’t mean to be confrontational.

But your OP seems to centre around “We do this better” - you don’t say it is better but it’s implied you think so, which is fine BTW (The money in restaurants thing in the UK gets on my tits and I cringe at the cheapness of it all) or that the culture is better. Well actually I don’t think the culture IS better, and I’d rather focus on, in my view, issues that matter. I don’t think I see the romantic view of Ireland many others do because of these issues.

The magdalene laundries were indeed horrendous, but they actually originated in the U.K. and were initially protestant run. Did the Catholic Church run them for many years in Ireland, yes they did, to Ireland's eternal shame. And while the last one closed in Ireland in the 1990s, at that time pregnant women hadn't been sent there for decades, institutionalised women were still being housed there, some of whom had dementia and other health/mental health issues. The Catholic Church has a history of abuse throughout the world, and are ruled from Rome, again shameful for Irish society but not actually an exclusively Irish problem. I can't comment on the recent changes in anonymity of sex offenders becausei haven't heard about it but generally, I can only say that anonymity is usually to protect the victims, if they are under age or if they would be identified by the perpetrator being named.