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.

Ye thin over 100 years after the fact people might have a mild idea.

But why?

Does not surprise me in the slightest. As an Irish person, the amount of ignorant, jaw droppingly stupid things said to me about Ireland by British people astounds me.

Not the same time zone, but Portugal, amongst others, don't follow the general spring forward fall back daylight saving regime.

Some people don’t know thing. That’s surely not a shock to you? Some people have different levels of intelligence, have had less educational opportunities, are easily confused, have all their energies taken up with other things. Realistically them being unaware of geography/common knowledge is completely harmless.

I try not to laugh at/mock/sneer at people who make mistakes or don’t know or understand things, because what I don’t know would fill a library of books. All those people who misunderstood or didn’t know the time zones of a country they may never have visited will know things you don’t know.

Yeah, I thought Belfast and northern Ireland was a weird way of phrasing it too, but ignored for simplicity's sake 😁
I mean, Belfast is in NI, they're not separate

Don’t know things, even! Some people don’t know some things. Nobody knows everything.

To be honest, I do think it's shocking. However, you don't know what you don't know so there are probably loads of things I don't know that should be obvious to me. I'd have thought it's pretty basic knowledge though that everyone living in this region should know.

Because you should have learnt about time zones across the world at school. There's 24 time zones, so massive countries have multiple time zones, e.g. USA.

But the UK is pretty small in global terns so logic would say we've just the one time zone.

Belfast is in NI. No need to say one plus other. There are 6 of our counties that are NI. Dublin and the 'other' counties consist of 26 counties in total. We refer to ourselves just as Ireland. We only use 'the south' to people who do not understand that Ireland and Northern Ireland are technically different countries on the one island. We do not refer to England as Southern Scotland so not a fan of being called Southern Ireland but hey whatever makes it easier.

What is NI?

For some reason I can never remember the difference between Great Britain, United Kingdom and the British Isles. I've even just googled it and the information has already fell out of my head.

France, Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium were all originally in the same time zone as the UK, but Germany changed their time to match the German zone (one hour ahead of the UK) during their occupation of those countries during the war. Meanwhile, Spanish dictator Franco changed the time to an hour ahead in Spain too. (end quote)

Well said
Hate posts that are sneery or look down on others for not knowing something.
Can put people off asking something, and I'd much rather people asked questions than stayed ignorant as they were afraid of looking daft 😢

Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland

No, I never did learn about time zones at school. But even if I had done, I don't think I'd remember the details of every single one of them...

Why not say The Republic of Ireland and avoid any misunderstanding?

It’s really the bare minimum to know basic details about the country you live in! It’s not like the UK is even big.

I and my whole family in Northern Ireland call ourselves Northern Irish and British, but not Irish. Lived not far from Belfast for at least 150 years, possibly 200 without moving much until modern times. We're Catholic too, if that makes a difference.

But people are correct in saying "Ireland isn't in the UK" as that is what the Republic of Ireland officially calls itself. Only Northern Ireland is in the UK.

Because if you knew history at all then you would never misunderstand the fact that it is just Ireland. It is not 'southern' ireland'. Not 'the republic of' and certainly not 'eire'. It is just Ireland. If people learned history or even a bit of basic geography we would not need to refer to it as anything other than Ireland.

Do non-Unionists still refer to "the British Isles"?
Although "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is the name of the political union, there is resistance against calling the mainland "Britain". Many Scottish and Welsh people prefer to call it "this island" and many non-English generally talk of "these islands" or "the west European archipelago" rather than use the dread words "Britain" or "British".

Mind you, it's difficult to think of the proper term for the big island in this archipelago when you're not actually on it and can't refer to it as "this island". I've never been able to get a sensible answer to that question.

But I have met Belfastians who corrected me to say Southern Ireland.

Whose view wins?

Because I'm not talking about The Republic of Ireland. I'm talking about Belfast. A city in the UK.

Do UK citizens really believe that NI has a different time zone to the rest of the UK? That is not a good thing.

What counts as a basic detail though? I imagine I don't know half of this essential information, at least...