Differences (rep Ireland) Irish V UK

[Sillysandy]

I am Irish living in Ireland. My DH is British, he is an immigrant who grew up in London but had lived for 20 years in Ireland when I met him.

I discovered mumsnet about 8 years ago when I took on a sort of stepmum role and was flabbergasted at some of the stories, attitudes and opinions.

I still found the site extremely helpful, often giving me clarity on situations which would cause me a lot of angst.

However when I talk to friends and family members living in the UK I realise that a lot is to do with cultural differences.

It's amazing given how close geographically we are.

Attitudes to money, marriage, divorce, wedding gifts, abortion, house purchases, communication with friends are so far from anything I've seen in my circles.

To give my pov; (these are all generalisations) we get married later, we stay married, we don't consider abortion unless it's very particular circumstances, we are indirect about money "I'll get this one, you can get the next one (but it is LAW you only accept if you are buying back)" and sending bank details for a small amount would be horrifyingly rude, you only attend a wedding with a card containing at least 100 euro pp, you usually get married in your mid thirties, your kids are mainly all with the one father, we hide behind humour until we know a person very well, we don't report benefit fraud, we laugh a lot more... That's just off the top of my head.

The other thing is that most Irish people know all about English Irish historical tensions but many English people are utterly oblivious.

YABU You're talking out of your ass
YANBU The differences are enormous

I'd love to hear some thoughts on this. In my line of work now I do a weekly call with my UK based team and I always notice subtle differences in attitude.

They are indeed. Absolutely heartbreaking

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.

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

No you've misinterpreted me AGAIN. It's your interpretation that I was claiming Ireland was better. I don't live in the UK and I generally don't have opinions on things I know little to nothing about.

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 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.

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

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.

Well you've basically proved the point I was making in the post you quoted.

So annoying that touchy people have to ruin a thread I was enjoying immensely.

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

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

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.

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

Could somebody please point me to where I said the Irish way is the right way?

So bloody boring and typical for twats to ruin a conversation because instead of contributing anything relevant to the actual topic they are choosing to find insults?

Irish people are bloody renowned for being self deprecating. Yet here I am on a thread about subtle Irish differences allegedly bragging about how we do everything absolutely right.

Pathetic.

Thanks for spoiling a thread I was really enjoying on an otherwise stressful day.

I think you’ve hit a nerve for some on this thread.
I’m Irish, living in Dublin, DH is British & living here over 20 years. I think a lot of your observations are spot on - in particular the wedding stuff.
When we got married my family & friends all went with the customary €100+ pp in an envelope. DH’s family gifts included a £20 Argos (UK) voucher a £30 M&S (UK) voucher & a photo frame from Asda - it’s just a wildly different perspective. In Ireland these would probably not even be considered suitable engagement gifts from close family.
Last year my dad & MIL died. The UK funeral planning was excruciating & we had to wait in limbo for 4 weeks for it to be arranged. Irish funeral done & dusted in 4 days.
My DH & 2 SIL married very young and all 3 ended in divorce. I think it would be unusual in an Irish family for all the siblings to be divorced.
Yes, as a country we’ve got a lot of things wrong (church/laundries etc) but I think overall we are, on a personal level, warm & welcoming people who see nothing wrong in chatting to a stranger.

I guess for me the thing this thread has highlighted that I find strange is the focus on how friendly, warm and welcoming the Irish culture is whilst simultaneously judging people for not giving 100s of euros as a wedding gift. The two seem quite contradictory to me. Although very thoughtless for your UK relatives to get you vouchers you couldn’t actually spend!

'I guess for me the thing this thread has highlighted that I find strange is the focus on how friendly, warm and welcoming the Irish culture is whilst simultaneously judging people for not giving 100s of euros as a wedding gift'

It's come up a few times that the 'friendliness' is often superficial. There's a big emphasis on conformity, doing what's expected, knowing 'the right thing to do' and naturally there's a lot of judgement that goes alongside that way of thinking

According to the Ross O'C-K wiki entry, his parents were from more humble beginnings. So that fits. Where would I place him in the English class system? Perhaps akin to the current Princess of Wales. Some of the most upper class inbred types might have been whispering "doors to manual" 20 years ago, but the future King picked her and most of the rest of the country would consider her at least on a level with the likes of Ross and his Rock friends.

Absolutely; you'll see lots of contradictions with Irish people; quite closed beyond the apparent friendliness - that pp was so accurate in how she described her surprise that the queue chatting mum wanted to progress their potential friendship.

Also the 'generosity'. We will fight to the death about the bill "I'm getting it" but it is understood you take turns. Addressing the issue is genuinely really hard - the thought of saying to a friend "can you pay as I did last time?" would honestly feel very uncomfortable. Thankfully revolut has made life so much easier in this respect.

We don't have much generational wealth going back really far as we were still a poor country in some people's living memories.

I think this explains to an extent why the class thing is not so apparent and why we are uncomfortable talking about money.

However I'm 47 and I hope the younger generations are more straightforward.

I agree with a lot of your points
Especially covering your plate at a wedding and going out of your way to not be seen as stingy.

Im from the north and funerals are staring to take a bit longer here 4 to 5 days but its due to lack of availability of funeral director services/crematorium/grave diggers.

I also have reached peak middle age as I was the one handing out notes at a family disco this summer.

My query......

This is obviously very minor difference between England and Ireland it niggles me massively and would never happen here.

I was in a busy London pub and a bloke beside me ordered a lager. Just a lager l being unable to hold my nosiness asked why he hasn't ordered a brand and he said lager is lager, noone orders a brand - like I was crazy.

You would NEVER order a lager or an ale or really any type of alcohol without giving specifics in a bar.
(Not giving into drunk Irish stereotypes)

But is this usual? It felt very "Give me a pint of lager Tracey love" to get around branding laws on Eastenders

Yes I know this is a massive burning question.

I think you just got one guy who doesn’t much care what he drinks!

I remember my parents being completely taken aback when they went to visit English relatives who kindly picked them up at LHR, said ‘You must be dying for a cup of tea’ (my parents had a trek to the nearest airport and had had an early start), but rather than going to a cafe in LHR, they drove out of the airport, stopped at a garage forecourt with a bench and produced a flask of tea and digestives.

I actually like this story as an alternative to my mother’s ingrained horror of not looking hospitable, which has led her to produce three-course meals for people who have specifically told her they have just eaten or can only stay five minutes.

I certainly found modest English weddings that had thirty or fifty people in a room above a pub or a village hall buffet a real treat after the compulsory 200-guest church+and-hotel affairs. Not that all English weddings are modest by any means (I was at one with 250 people in the V and A sculpture gallery), but I liked that there was more variety.

I get the awkwardness about money (or at least talking about it - I think in the UK it would also be fairly mortifying to point out that it’s somebody else’s turn to pay!). I just don’t get how that then tallies with expecting people to contribute hundreds of euros to wedding gifts and thinking badly of them if they don’t.

I was initially going to say this is a that guy thing but thinking about it I guess you do order a lot of drinks generically in the UK?

In most pubs there’s a house white/red so you don’t specify (or you’ll just ask for white and they’ll ask if that’s Pinot or Sauvignon - the two normal options!), spirits tend to be the house spirit unless you specify separately. I don’t drink beer so maybe you can just ask for a larger and they’ll default to the cheapest one?

It's not weird though as it's so standardised so it's built into the cost of attending. Weddings are really expensive here, tens of thousands of euro so it's not like you're making money off your guests.