Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Note a kind of understandable assessment there Vector1 however I would till be against unification of north and south.
I suspect many a Unionist would prefer to remain part of Britain for various reasons, so that comes as little surprise. I have been watching several shows/interviews regarding how Unionists think and feel about the real possibility of a united Ireland, and they run the spectrum from they would not notice much difference, to they would pack up and leave.
Good old Foster made that comment which was not to smart or politically savvy on her part.
BTW - You may have missed the question I posed to you regarding you being a mainland Unionist vs. those in NI.
Is there much of a difference in your view?
Uh-oh, issed noting that issue! In general terms there is perhaps a general difference.
Decades ago we had the Scottish Unionist Party then it changed it's name to Scottish Conservative & Unionist. At one time way back in the early 1950's it polled over 50% of the votes then gradually declined. It just bumped along then got a woman leader who got stuck in and surprised everyone by advancing the Unionist stance in Scotland. In the last two or three years it has bounced a way back from the years of nothing much. It did better than Labour and indeed overtook them in the Scottish Parliament becoming the official opposition. The leader is a very active woman who did well in fighting against the Independence Referendum winning that. They also greatly increased their councillors and as I said became the opposition to the Nationalists who lost seats to her Unionist fight. The Unionists also rose from one MP at Westminster to 13 and took the seat off the SNP leader in the Commons as well as knocking out the MP who had been 1st Minister (Alex Salmond).
However there is in activity no close link between the Scottish Unionist corner and that of Ulster. Part of that may be due to there being two main Unionist parties in Ulster as well as the more difficult situation across the Irish Sea.
Uh-oh, issed noting that issue! In general terms there is perhaps a general difference.
Decades ago we had the Scottish Unionist Party then it changed it's name to Scottish Conservative & Unionist. At one time way back in the early 1950's it polled over 50% of the votes then gradually declined. It just bumped along then got a woman leader who got stuck in and surprised everyone by advancing the Unionist stance in Scotland. In the last two or three years it has bounced a way back from the years of nothing much. It did better than Labour and indeed overtook them in the Scottish Parliament becoming the official opposition. The leader is a very active woman who did well in fighting against the Independence Referendum winning that. They also greatly increased their councillors and as I said became the opposition to the Nationalists who lost seats to her Unionist fight. The Unionists also rose from one MP at Westminster to 13 and took the seat off the SNP leader in the Commons as well as knocking out the MP who had been 1st Minister (Alex Salmond).
However there is in activity no close link between the Scottish Unionist corner and that of Ulster. Part of that may be due to there being two main Unionist parties in Ulster as well as the more difficult situation across the Irish Sea.
Okay, thanks for trying to answer the question.
If I may read into your post to some degree, you think the UK should remain together as is, which of course includes NI.
If that is a given, I suspect you'd still feel that if one part of the UK must go, be it NI or Scotland, you'd want to remain part of the UK and it would be NI to go, correct?
I also imagine you do not have the hardcore guys like Loyalists in NI in your neck of the woods, or a political party like the DUP who support any of the UDA nutters running about in Glasgow, like Dee Stitt and the like.
Why would there need to be a "significant majority" who voted for it, verses say a small majority to make it happen?
I do not recall any specific threshold other than a simple majority, thus a 50% + one vote would in theory be all that was needed. Granted that would likely trigger recounts looking for any invalid votes to upend either side that won by such a slim majority.
Second, the potential resistance of the Loyalists might be violent, but as I asked a few posts ago, I am having trouble envisioning who they would attack and with what reasoning?
`
I personally don't think they would call for a vote unless there was a 55 - 60% in favour. I don't think people in the Republic would want to join with the North unless there was a real majority. Who wants a large percentage of people that don't want to part of a nation? Who wants to risk that sort of instability? The people in the Republic get a vote as well but the vote would take place simultaneously.
I also can't see Loyalists getting violent if there is reunification. Britain would be out of it so what would be the point? People that are really against it would have the opportunity to move to Britain if they really couldn't stomach being part of a United Ireland. The only reason for violence would be if there was a possibility of keeping Northern Ireland as it is and in the event of a majority vote going the way of a United Ireland there would be no possibility of that. It would just be a pointless exercise so no real gain to anyone involved. I'm sure most people with a modicum of intelligence would realise this.
I personally don't think they would call for a vote unless there was a 55 - 60% in favour. I don't think people in the Republic would want to join with the North unless there was a real majority. Who wants a large percentage of people that don't want to part of a nation? Who wants to risk that sort of instability? The people in the Republic get a vote as well but the vote would take place simultaneously.
I also can't see Loyalists getting violent if there is reunification. Britain would be out of it so what would be the point? People that are really against it would have the opportunity to move to Britain if they really couldn't stomach being part of a United Ireland. The only reason for violence would be if there was a possibility of keeping Northern Ireland as it is and in the event of a majority vote going the way of a United Ireland there would be no possibility of that. It would just be a pointless exercise so no real gain to anyone involved. I'm sure most people with a modicum of intelligence would realize this.
That is an interesting and could be a potential sticking point for how and when a referendum would be called.
If it were based on a belief that it had at least a 5-10% majority to be called, who makes such a decision and what would that figure be based on?
Obviously if it were a political decision, a delay could be done just to throw a monkey wrench into the mix.
Pressure would undoubtedly be brought to bear by the Unionists not to have the referendum.
If it were based on polls, even so called "scientific polling", we know from Brexit and the American presidential election that polls are not worth the time to conduct, and disseminate the information.
Also, this is nothing new as I try to remind people regarding polling in general. If you think back to the late 1970's early 1980's, Jimmy Carter was president and was predicted by polling to wipe Ronald Reagan out in the 1980 election. Even as close as a few weeks before the election, Carter was predicted to win by a comfortable margin by most polls.
Yet as history has taught us, Reagan instead wiped the floor with Carter.
Of course people claimed polling was not as accurate back then, yet looking at the Brexit vote in the UK and the 2016 presidential vote in 2016, both polls were way off.
So it almost seems foolish to use polling (which can be inaccurate and manipulated) to decide when and if a referendum will be called.
That is especially true to decide such a monumental decision like the fate of a nation.
I have been saying for some time the GFA is in peril, despite critics like Roscoe telling me I am daft. I guess both Blair & Ahern are daft as well, so I feel that I am in good company;
"At the same time, two of the architects of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, have combined to pen a strong message to both the Conservative and Labour leaders. The pair have warned that the 1998 agreement is under threat, but also offer a solution to the crux - while they also endorse a second Brexit referendum before the latest extension expires on October 31 next."
That is an interesting and could be a potential sticking point for how and when a referendum would be called.
If it were based on a belief that it had at least a 5-10% majority to be called, who makes such a decision and what would that figure be based on?
Obviously if it were a political decision, a delay could be done just to throw a monkey wrench into the mix.
Pressure would undoubtedly be brought to bear by the Unionists not to have the referendum.
If it were based on polls, even so called "scientific polling", we know from Brexit and the American presidential election that polls are not worth the time to conduct, and disseminate the information.
Also, this is nothing new as I try to remind people regarding polling in general. If you think back to the late 1970's early 1980's, Jimmy Carter was president and was predicted by polling to wipe Ronald Reagan out in the 1980 election. Even as close as a few weeks before the election, Carter was predicted to win by a comfortable margin by most polls.
Yet as history has taught us, Reagan instead wiped the floor with Carter.
Of course people claimed polling was not as accurate back then, yet looking at the Brexit vote in the UK and the 2016 presidential vote in 2016, both polls were way off.
So it almost seems foolish to use polling (which can be inaccurate and manipulated) to decide when and if a referendum will be called.
That is especially true to decide such a monumental decision like the fate of a nation.
`
The Secretary of State of Northern Ireland decides if there is to be a Referendum if they feel the majority would want it. This is not a one off Referendum either as it can be run every 7 years. I feel, despite what the naysayers here might think, that it is inevitable that there will eventually be a United Ireland. It will only happen though if the majority want it but once the demographics change and if the UK / EU and border issue isn't sorted out to the satisfaction of most Northern Irish you can see the pendulum shifting in the favour of a United Ireland. I'm very interested to see what happens with the Brexit situation. If things don't go well you can also see the Scots getting a bit dissatisfied with the situation. It does all hinge on what happens with the UK in the next few years.
The Free Press Is Under Threat in Northern Ireland, Too
You would have thought that, after over 800 years, Great Britain would be tired of f'ing things up in Ireland. Of course, you'd be very wrong about that. Right now, the mess that Theresa May's government has made of Brexit is threatening the stability of the peace process that brought a semblance of order to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. People risked their lives to make that arrangement work. For the British to make a hash of it because they can't get their domestic political house in order would be an act of criminal malfeasance.
And then there's this from Amnesty International—an item that ought to set the hair of all those brave freedom-of-the-press types ablaze.
In 1994, Protestant paramilitaries barged into a crowded pub in a place called Loughinisland in County Down. A World Cup match between Italy and Ireland was showing on the television. The intruders opened fire, killing six people and wounding five more. Nobody ever has been arrested for participating in this unprovoked massacre.
There is a reason for that. The police and British intelligence had links to the Protestant paramilitaries that they'd rather not have the world know about.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,706,106 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector1
The Free Press Is Under Threat in Northern Ireland, Too
You would have thought that, after over 800 years, Great Britain would be tired of f'ing things up in Ireland. Of course, you'd be very wrong about that. Right now, the mess that Theresa May's government has made of Brexit is threatening the stability of the peace process that brought a semblance of order to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. People risked their lives to make that arrangement work. For the British to make a hash of it because they can't get their domestic political house in order would be an act of criminal malfeasance.
And then there's this from Amnesty International—an item that ought to set the hair of all those brave freedom-of-the-press types ablaze.
In 1994, Protestant paramilitaries barged into a crowded pub in a place called Loughinisland in County Down. A World Cup match between Italy and Ireland was showing on the television. The intruders opened fire, killing six people and wounding five more. Nobody ever has been arrested for participating in this unprovoked massacre.
There is a reason for that. The police and British intelligence had links to the Protestant paramilitaries that they'd rather not have the world know about.
James I/VI started the plantation in 1604, so just over 400 years ago. Henry VIII & Elizabeth I had a go at it, but it was James Stuart who was successful.
James I/VI started the plantation in 1604, so just over 400 years ago. Henry VIII & Elizabeth I had a go at it, but it was James Stuart who was successful.
A British presence pre dated the ulster plantation by centuries
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
