AIBU - England couldn’t care less about Northern Ireland

[ThisThatTheOther]

Northern Ireland has seen a return to violence , petrol bombs etc every night for a week now. It’s dominated the headlines here in Ireland. People are worried as peace up north is so fragile. Listening to the radio yesterday an old advisor of Tony Blair was on to discuss. The radio host read out the top 8 listed stories on all main English sites and the violence of Northern Ireland didn’t even feature. It’s the top headline again in all major Irish publications this morning but not in English publications.

We no longer live in the 1600s ffs! Society evolves!

@Emeraldshamrock

Tbf I think a lot of Arlene's annoyances over the funeral are a distraction to avoid answering questions or even encouraging an investigation into the Noah Donohue case. Scandalous.

I agree completely. That poor family.

I think this Tory government does not care. They loathe the DUP and resent having been held to ransom by them for their support in the recent past. TBH I loathe the DUP too but I am not a Tory voter.

I don't think the current violence is anything to do with Brexit. It is being used as an excuse by young, male thugs who are enjoying stirring up massive public unrest because it suits their tiny mindset. Most people in NI are nothing to do with this unrest and violence.

@mumtobe9 who doesnt live a good bonny? Only joking. I vacate NI for most of July just avoid flag waving relatives. Just to be fair to a much lesser extent both sides dont cover themselves with glory when comes to bonfires

Yep if Stephen Nolan spent 5% of the time discussing Noah maybe the poor family would get some answers. Scandalous. Instead we've listened to bobby storey funeral on repeat for fecking months. I had never heard of him before that!

😂😂 I have lived here for the past 10 years and I could not understand at the beginning why July was fully booked for holidays at work. It is harder to get the week of the 12th off than Christmas!

@Sarahtrue11

Were you not able at six years old to identify teenagers?
I remember clearly having the thought "how can he be a soldier, he is so young". And my mother talked to him and asked him what age he was. He was 19.

Don't know about the rest of ye, but when I was 6, I certainly wouldn't of considered a 19 year old teenager as being young.... Pretty sure I thought 10 yr olds were 'the big / old ones', 19 would have been positively ancient, and I doubt most 6 yr olds could tell the difference between a 19 and 29 yr old, even 39!

Are you telling me you recall 6 yr old you standing with your Mother and you took such a big interest in their conversation that you retained this information..... Sure you weren't moaning about being bored / hungry / want to go play / why does your Ma chat for soo long.....

Come on. A 6 year old does not go "wowww, that guy looks so young, how's he a soldier" when he's 3 times your size.

I can't see Northern Ireland ever changing until they abolish the fully segregated school system in NI.

@mumtobe9 😂 cos everyone wants to either leave or march and wave their flegs so need time off 😬😂

If it's getting less attention than people in NI think it should, maybe it's because we English have realised that people in the devolved nations mostly despise us,

Nope, most of the people of NI are more than aware of our unimportance to Westminster. The fuckwits of the DUP and their followers got a rush to the head when the Tories invited them into a coalition in order to "Get Brexit Done". The rest of us knew how disposable our lives and futures are to English folk and the shitshow that would follow.
We shouted loudly about it, but weren't listened to because we are seen as unimportant.

Which is why the recent violence was not prominent on the news. Until Wednesday night.

I don't think the current violence is anything to do with Brexit. It is being used as an excuse by young, male thugs who are enjoying stirring up massive public unrest
It has everything to do with the sea border which is a result of Brexit.
Someone will be killed soon.

@SarahBellam

It’s not even that English people don’t care. They’re completely unaware. I was brought up in NI and came to England to do a masters, met an English man, got married and stayed here. In NI we were fully aware of the whole Loyalist/National tensions, and the Loyalist loyalty to being British. I was really surprised to see that people here hadn’t a clue and didn’t give a damn about these people and barely knew of their existence- indeed many people didn’t even know that NI and Ireland were two different countries and couldn’t explain the relationship between them, even if they’d wanted to. It’s like many Loyalist NI people have limerance for a Britain which barely knows they exist.

I’ve often said Arlene and co are like the mistress left with nothing by the self serving husband who has loved in to his next conquest.

... and in the case of Boris that is pretty much the case

@LookItsMeAgain, it was tempting to tell her to fuck off with that shit, but I just pointed out that that would take us right back to pre-1921, Easter Rising etc.

She's 82, fiercely patriotic, and doesn't accept that the UK ever does anything wrong. I'd have been wasting my breath. (Although she has recently conceded that I was right about the invasion of Iraq further destabilising an already unstable region, so maybe there's hope.)

Sorry wrong thread have asked for it to be removed

The 1922 partition was only ever intended by the British as a temporary fix. Even Carson finally (to his horror) realised that. To many in Britain the possibility of finally being rid of NI and seeing a united Ireland was one of the few pluses of Brexit.

To be fair, I've always considered it to be little different now to in the 1600s.
Well, to be just as fair, anyone who considers NI in 2021 to be little different to how it was in the 17th century is either stupid or not paying attention

@PhoenixandtheRug

Your posts on NI are incredibly sectarian and unnecessarily provocative and highlights the current and future issues NI will face in whatever form it may be in 10/20/50 years.

As an aside and I'm sure you know full well, "drug gangs" in NI are not just a loyalist phenomenon - plenty of criminal republicans/IRA are massivley involved in drug supply and dealing, indeed deals and contact between loyalist/republican criminal gangs about control of areas etc show how criminals from both communities can work together just fine if money and criminal misery are involved.

I've got a friend who lives in NI, he says that the majority of the people feel like they have been sold down the river to get Brexit done & Boris & his cronies don't care what happens to the whole of Ireland. He said since the GFA, it has been good & now it is like they are back to square one. My MP is the shadow NI secretary & she is arguing that NI has been virtually abandoned by the rest of the UK. If things don't settle down I can see the British army being sent back, the whole thing erupting again & the GFA being forgotten.

YANBU

It's not even being reported in depth on the news, if at all. I only knew because I read about situation on Twitter last week, so started reading daily updates.

English media are biased and manipulative. Brexit has ruined peace but as the problems are way over in N.I, the government don't care.

Just as in voting Brexit many didn't take into account (or care) what a Yes vote would mean for Ireland

I think this Tory government does not care

You are absolutely correct, and having seen their utter contempt for all things devolved, I'm convinced that rather than a simple case of being hardline English nationalists, the component parts of this government are simply too stupid, ill-educated, and self-absorbed to bother themselves with the hard work of trying to grasp the nuance and complexity of the issues in devolved areas, so they've adopted this ridiculous and ultimately completely self-defeating approach of waving even more union flags, dressing everything up in bunting, flying spitfires past it all, and trying to invoke a 'blitz spirit' that extinguished before most of us were even born.

The fact they are simultaneously in the pocket of, and utterly in command of the mainstream media ensures that there is absolutely no scrutiny upon them, and little to no coverage of the consequences of their misadventures. The UK is stumbling headlong into a disastrous era of governance by complete and utter blithering idiots. It's a simple question of will the UK outlive the politicians or the other way around, and given that England seems to be completely enraptured with the Tories, I suspect we'll see the end of the UK before we see the end of them. It won't prevent most of them attempting to slink off immediately beforehand though, in an attempt to avoid carrying the baggage of being seen as the unionists that destroyed the union, and had their hands on the controls when it finally fell apart.

If things don't settle down I can see the British army being sent back, the whole thing erupting again & the GFA being forgotten

Just about the only hope I have of this not coming to pass, is that Trump did not give a single shiny shite about the US's role as a guarantor of the GFA, whereas Biden at least talks as if he views this with the utmost importance. If the US stays true to the noises about the UK being told to completely ram any notion of a trade deal until this is resolved, then that should at least impart some degree of pressure on the UK government to get something done. I think some sort of backtrack on the Brexit terms is ultimately more likely than troops being deployed in NI, but I'm not holding my breath.

Violence of any sort, particularly around the issues of religion, is completely pointless and backwards. I don't really care because I think in this day and age, the younger generations should take responsibility to move on. It's pathetic.

You’re missing the point entirely @bedtimeshoes. It’s about identity. It’s closer to drug gangs staking out estates and postcodes.

NI has been failed for years by its politicians and the DUP have been bolstered by Brexit because Westminster needed their votes. When you watch the head of the state being openly derogatory to half of the population you get a sense of how politics is run. There is nothing statesmen/women like with the main politicians. There is no sense of bringing the state together and developing g a shared identity.

The fact there is a religious divide does not mean the Troubles “boil down to religious differences”. I did not say that religion should be ignored, I just took issue with your contention that religion is at the heart of it. It isn’t. It’s about national identity; religion is just a signifier. At no point during the Troubles were the paramilitaries arguing about transubstantiation ffs.

Yep