Well fuck me pink and call me Rosie. AIBU?

[TooBigForMyBoots]

Do you know that Belfast and NI are in the British Isles? Are you aware that some British people claim they do not know that NI is in the same timezone as the rest of the UK?

YABU = You can't expect British people to know the history and geography of their country.
YANBU = Of course British people know this stuff. Anyone who says otherwise is having you on.

How can anyone have missed that "people" in Northern Ireland identify as Irish or British. Haven't you heard of the Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement?

No you’re not. You’re doing a survey on what mnetters think other UK mumsnetters believe. Not the same thing. Eg I know perfectly well it’s all the same time zone, but I bet a small number of people don’t. So I can’t really answer how you’d like.

You realise a lot of us were never taught about our own country? We were taught WW2 and Henry the 8th etc but teaching us about our own country never happened and I'm older than Google my DD knows a little more but was taught pretty much the same ds1 is being taught about the Vietnam war we are never taught about modern history on our own doorstep I had to teach him about the IRA fgs because I lived through it he has no clue why unattended baggage on the underground is a trigger

This in the nineties but a friend who worked in a bank in NI was on the phone to a person who worked in a English bank and they didn't know that NI worked in sterling and not punts pre Euros

Nope! Go look at the data, 33.1% of respondents described themselves as 'Irish'.

I kind of get it. People see Ireland as one thing, a bit of land different to England/Wales/Scotland and get confused about which bit is part of the uk and then if that means a time difference. Just ignorance.

TBF OP you don't come across too well either with your 'Belfast and NI' comment - weird way of putting it! There are lots of people who don't understand the geography and political situation regarding NI and the rest of the UK and Ireland, I thought everyone knew that? The time zone thing is a bit of a red herring, who cares if a few people weren't sure?

My (English) friend (lives in NI) had visitors over from England once, who heard me and my DC talking, one of them said 'aw I have never heard people talking in Irish before' - we were definitely talking in English 😂

They just assumed all NI people converse in Irish (I guess our accents didn't help!).

I knew, but I could understand someone thinking if you have to get on a ferry or plane to visit somewhere, the timezone might be different. Its a much shorter distance from Dover to Calais than Cairnryan to Belfast for instance, and yet the time zone alters for one and not the other.
Chuck in the difference between sunrise's , Dover and Calais is an hour apart if you take into account the timezones, but in reality they happen at almost exactly the same time. Belfast's sunrise is 25 minutes later because its much further north, but taking into account the timezone of France it is half an hour earlier than Calais.

The average IQ is 100. We have a revolving Tory government that's bleeding us dry and has fd up GB. What more is there to say, except statistically, Irish people, based on exams and quals, are the most intelligent of all countries in the British Isles?

I work for a global firm though my close colleagues are predominantly based in UK. I’m from Northern Ireland (Belfast). I’d also travel to England a few times a year.

it never ceases to amaze me how many people think we use Euros in Northern Ireland, that we have a different system for taxing and registering cars than DVA, that we need a special visa to travel to England, that we have to use international post to send something to Manchester, and more. I even got asked once if we drive on the same side of the road as ‘people in the UK’.

It certainly doesn’t faze me or offend me in any way, and it certainly isn’t from everyone I’ve ever encountered in England/Scotland/Wales, but the lack of knowledge shown by some about part of the UK is surprising. The Irish Sea is 150 miles wide but you’d swear we were as far away as as Australia sometimes.

What do you mean when you say you "lived through it"? And please tell me you didn't just teach him about the IRA, you mentioned loyalist paramilitaries too right?

Christ this thread is a dumpster fire even by normal MN Irish thread standards.

I've decided that even worse than British (usually English) posters who are completely ignorant about Ireland and NI, are the posters who state absolutes about NI and its citizens identities. Gobshites all. The whole bloody point is that it's ambiguous, and fluid, and flexible, and personal.

I will never stop being amazed and shocked about the ignorance of many England based Brits about NI.

My favourites include:

• The woman in the Post Office condescendingly telling me I couldn't send something recorded delivery from Birmingham to Belfast because recorded delivery only works in the UK
• The woman on the bus crossing the tarmac from plane to terminal having landed in Belfast and complaining to her friend that she wouldn't be able to use her straighteners because she'd forgotten her adaptor
• The woman in a shop confused by by Bank of Ireland £10. Fair enough not being familiar with the actual note, but what she said was "I can't remember which ones we can accept, is it the Irish ones or the Northern Irish ones?"

@TooBigForMyBoots

I think UK citizens is pretty explanatory. I have somewhat narrowed it down to people who have voted in multiple UK elections.

So have I lost my citizenship my living overseas and not voting?

That's why I wear a watch. But I still have to look at and feel it before I give directions.🙈

So you'll happily admit that you don't know your left from your right, OP - a very, very basic thing which most small children can grasp and which is useful in everyday life? And yet you start a thread just to mock people for not knowing something which, while common knowledge to most of us, we could almost certainly get through our whole lives not knowing, without any actual inconvenience.

It's not ambiguous at all.

Wtf. Of course it is. There are no absolutes in NI. Some feel they are wholly British, some wholly Irish and for others it's more complex than that. None of them are wrong, and none of them can extrapolate their views to the rest of the population.

To all the PP saying some people in N.I. identify as N.Irish/British, it would be more accurate to say approximately half. Look at the results of the latest census. People seem to be romanticising the whole thing, whilst being incredibly dismissive at the same time. A PP even suggested it was 'embarrassing' that some people in NI they know say they're British. Up until very recently a majority of people here stated their nationality as British / Northern Irish.
The romantic rose tinted view of a Republic that fought against the oppressors no doubt influences how outsiders view things here.

People use Ireland/Republic of Ireland interchangeably, but it's inaccurate. Ireland, geographically, is an island. Currently, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are separate. Historically this wasn't the case but it is now.

Not inaccurate. Ireland refers to both the country and the island. ROI can be used to differentiate where necessary (and that's a very handy apolitical way of doing so) but formally the country is called Ireland.

I've been called out on threads in the past for confusing England/Scotland/Northern Ireland/Wales individually, Isle of Man/Jersey, Britain, and the United Kingdom. The thing is, I'm not from here and didn't learn the difference in school. I find it utterly confusing.

It's ignorant to assume that all posters are from Britain and have the same knowledge-base.

It's actually British, Irish, Northern Irish and/or ANY combination of all three.

As far as combined identities go, the most popular one is Northern Irish and British at 8%. I'd have to check, but I think Irish and Northern Irish combined identity is about 1%.

But British only remains the most popular one at 42%. With the 8% of Northern Irish and British only, that gives us approximately 50%.

There is a certain amount of fluidity there, but not as much as outsiders might presume. We're still mostly fixed into the traditional two with the newer group growing much, much faster.

Well, don't say I didn't warn ye we in Northern Ireland are a complicated bunch! 🤣

Personally, I think many non-British people shouldn't have a hard time understanding that Northern Ireland isn't a separate country from Great Britain.

The French, Portuguese and Spanish all have territories that spans varying distances of water. Indonesia, Malaysia and the USA are three more examples.

Even British people shouldn't struggle with this as Shetland is 390 miles away from Great Britain. Northern Ireland, in contrast, is just 13 miles away at the closest point to Scotland.

I think non-British also should be familiar enough to understand that how many time zones a country has is related to how big its territory is. The entire British Isles is tiny really, so has one time zone. Russia, Canada and the USA are one of the biggest countries in the world, so have more than one time zones.

Although we're tiny, it's clear that England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland all have an outsized influence on the rest of the world. Equally true is they all have complicated histories which is largely a result of living so close together. And yet we all have a history of working together for the greater good. This history is rarely acknowledged these days, I don't think.

Sad.

But I will agree with you that it doesn't make it right to call people thick over this kind of thing. I believe most people really don't think about their national territory too much as they take it for granted. Those in contested places clearly obsess, I would say, about it.

As a non-UK citizen it took me embarrassingly long to catch on to the fact that Derry and Londonderry are the same place.

Very very understandable