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AIBU?

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Original poster

To think that UK voters should be ashamed of their apathetic ignorance?

462 replies

MrsDustyBusty · 09/06/2017 20:44

Never heard of the DUP before today? Really, it's embarrassing.

Yet so many posters don't seem to find it that way. I'm a filthy foreigner and I literally know more about UK politics than many posters here.

AIBU to think that's really shameful?

OP posts:
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5
Justanothersingledoutnumber · 10/06/2017 10:13

Unless you actually believe this goady as fuck thread has nothing to do with the election.

CheeseQueen · 10/06/2017 10:13

This thread isn't about this election, it's about people's unwillingness to educate themselves

Is there any wonder that people are unwilling to educate themselves when they get laughed at, told they're stupid or that they're making people weep in despair at their ignorance?
You can't have it both ways. You either want people to educate themselves or you don't.

seoulsurvivor · 10/06/2017 10:14

cheese I am perfectly able to understand her. I just disagree with her.

just no it isn't. We could go on like that for days. If you read the OP, there is no mention of the election.

Justanothersingledoutnumber · 10/06/2017 10:15

and you actually believe this goady as fuck thread has nothing to do with the election?

seoulsurvivor · 10/06/2017 10:15

rdoo true. I should have made that more clear.

cheese oh god don't blame other people for you not knowing stuff. Go and educate yourself and stop crying about it.

MadeinBelfast · 10/06/2017 10:15

Sunny, wish there were a few more who felt like this. The fact the ginja ninja lost to that awful man just makes it feel like we'll never move forward.

Maxandrubyrubyandmax · 10/06/2017 10:17

Another reason less people know about the DUP than Sinn Fein is because Gerry Adams was synonymous with the IRA during the troubles and it was their violance which hit the mainland so most people on the mainland thought of them as the baddies during the troubles. The loyalist paramilitary did not really hit the mainland so people on the mainland were less informed of their atrocities.

MadeinBelfast · 10/06/2017 10:18

Portia, people in NI can't vote for Labour, they don't have candidates here. We have been regularly governed by a party we can't vote for.

CheeseQueen · 10/06/2017 10:20

oh god don't blame other people for you not knowing stuff. Go and educate yourself and stop crying about it.

WTAF are you on about now?! Grin

CheeseQueen · 10/06/2017 10:23

oh god don't blame other people for you not knowing stuff. Go and educate yourself and stop crying about it.

If you need it spelling out to you in clearer terms - people are saying they are despairing at people asking questions on social media, therefore trying to educate themselves. Then in the next breath saying "go educate yourselves."
Ummmm..... that's what they're doing.
I

seoulsurvivor · 10/06/2017 10:23

cheese you said 'is it any wonder people don't educate themselves when they get laughed at?' I was responding to that.

What the hell has anyone else got to do with your level of education? You are just making excuses.

Done with this thread. Youse are too depressing. No wonder half of Scotland just wants to be free.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 10/06/2017 10:23

This thread isn't about this election, it's about people's unwillingness to educate themselves

This thread is largely a vehicle for sanctimonious hectoring by a number of posters.

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 10/06/2017 10:25

Done with this thread. Youse are too depressing. No wonder half of Scotland just wants to be free

And bingo ! And "half of Scotland" does not "want to be free"

CheeseQueen · 10/06/2017 10:29

What the hell has anyone else got to do with your level of education? You are just making excuses.

NOWHERE have I said it's to do with my level of education. I'm saying that as it isn't something that is covered in school, and as most people weren't born/very small/lived nowhere near, it is something that you have to actively seek out to find the information. Which not everyone does, and before the election no-one had a reason to swot up on their history.
Now they are doing, they're getting told they should be educating themselves - posters like yourself berating them for doing the exact thing you want them to do!
Why can you not understand that? Sanctimonious posters going "I knew so you should too" is what's depressing on this thread, not people actually questions and learning.

Justanothersingledoutnumber · 10/06/2017 10:30

I still don't understand how you expect a young voter who has never heard of the troubles to know about it or know to search and research it and the politics surrounding it?

How can they educate themselves when they don't know anything of the history, don't know the terms or anything like that. You understand that most of these young voters will be entering the world of politics for the first time and focusing on who they are able to vote for, rather than the history of NI. It's totally understandable that people haven't come across the DUP before.

CheeseQueen · 10/06/2017 10:35

Yep. Do people forget that people who can vote next year will have been born in the year 2000...

Gwenhwyfar · 10/06/2017 10:51

"I think those of us alive during troubles in full swing will probably recall the DUP but since devolution and relative peace there has been less coverage of NI politics, I think most people would know there are Protestant unionists and Catholic loyalists in NI politics but not necessarily details of who the parties are."

This is exactly it. We know a bit about the situation, but not the details of the parties.
I will say again that it's do with the mainstream media. Someone upthread suggested listening to BBC radio Northern Ireland. Well, yes I could, but that is obviously aimed at people in Northern Ireland. Are we supposed to listen to every local BBC radio channel?

Gwenhwyfar · 10/06/2017 10:52

"I think they're unaware the UDA exist. And the UVF. And of the illegal stuff the British Army did. "

I would have been able to name UVF, but not the UDA. Know about the problems with the British Army too - seen the film about Bloody Sunday.

Sunnymorningwithbacon · 10/06/2017 10:54

flybythosenets.com/2017/06/09/meet-your-new-dup-overlords-coalition-conservatives/ Here you go.

Gwenhwyfar · 10/06/2017 10:55

"DUP have seats in Westminster, so why have they not been included in (the main) leaders debates? Plaid Cymru, UKIP, Greens all have fewer seats yet are represented, and outside of Wales we can't vote PC ... The debates and subsequent press coverage are one of the main ways that most people get political information in the run-up to an election."

Northern Ireland has quite a few parties that are not here on the mainland so it makes sense for them to have their own debates. The same cannot be said about Wales and Scotland although some people tried to make that argument. If PC wasn't included in the main debate, Welsh people would be watching the main UK debate with all the other major parties in Wales, which would obviously disadvantage PC specifically. It's not the same situation in Northern Ireland.

Addley · 10/06/2017 10:57

The problem for me with the Troubles is that, being born in 1986, my memories of the Troubles are in the same category as the Rwandan civil war and genocide, and the Bosnian war. A horrendous thing that was going on in the news that I didn't really understand and that was happening elsewhere.

Following that, up to and around the time of the Good Friday Agreement, it was politics that I didn't really understand that was on the news, and a bit boring to a preteen. And from that point onwards, a decade of news that focused on war in Iraq and Afghanistan. A politically interested person of my age will have followed US politics quite closely because it a was vastly important component of the main focus of the news. NI politics is not something that's been the main focus of the media at any point in my adult life.

Most people in England get their news and current affairs from a fairly small number of outlets that pretty much ignore most of what happens in Northern Ireland. I don't think it makes them apathetic to an unusual extent; it makes them ill-informed and ignorant, but most people are ill-informed and ignorant about quite a lot of important things because nobody has told them they're important. For someone like me, in their late twenties and early thirties, living in England, in order to be well-informed about Northern Irish politics, they have to take an active interest in politics to the extent that they will actively seek out information on things that their main sources of information don't really mention much. And for a lot of people my age, I wouldn't berate them too much if they didn't realise that there's anything there to seek out.

Gwenhwyfar · 10/06/2017 11:00

"Possible explanations as to why so few in England have heard of the DUP (I suspect knowledge is higher in Wales/Scotland)"

Pansies - have you read any of my comments about knowledge of politics in Wales? Many Welsh people don't even know our own First Minister, let alone the details of Northern Ireland politics.
Knowledge in Scotland may be higher because sectarianism can sometimes be an issue there as well.

Gwenhwyfar · 10/06/2017 11:04

"I did however do some research on Plaid Cymru since I was hoping they'd be able to form some kind of alliance with Labour, possibly with the Lib Dems and the SNP in order to keep the Tories out."

Unfortunately Corbyn said before the election that he wouldn't go into coalition with the SNP. A supply and confidence agreement might have been possible I suppose, but the numbers don't work anyway unfortunately. The silly thing is the papers and May frothing at the mouth at the prospect of anyone cooperating with the SNP as if they were evil, but it seems the DUP is OK.

Just read on FB allegations that Labour helped the Tories get the SNP out of certain seats. I'm not sure how - did Labour not stand in some areas or not campaign seriously to let the Tories win?

I've also just read on FB a Welshman complaining that a Radio 5 commentator today referred to the Lions team as 'England'.

Gwenhwyfar · 10/06/2017 11:07

"badcat your bad week is totally irrelevant. How many times do Northern Irish people have to be insulted by being called Irish? It is deeply offensive."

Only for the unionists surely?

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 10/06/2017 11:07

"Possible explanations as to why so few in England have heard of the DUP (I suspect knowledge is higher in Wales/Scotland)"

I'm in Scotland. For the reasons given by Gwen, I doubt it. I knew the DUP exist and they are hard right unionists. It suits some of Scottish nationalists to try to discredit unionists in Scotland to say we are just like them.

Paisley and McGinnis re- inventing themselves as the Chuckle brothers was an unedifying spectacle.

I have no idea who the First minister in Wales is.