Posted on 10/14/2019 7:19:02 AM PDT by Cronos
So Wales demands a border with the UK, but daily I hear from NPR/BBCA that the Irish border with the UK is what makes a hard exit impossible....
You have a very generous definiton of pretty well.
And even if, economically speaking, Ireland’s engine was chugging along just fine, Sam Adams’ chains quote springs to mind.
Ireland can enjoy theirs with my blessing.
Ireland’s GDP per capita is greater than the UK’s
Because it is a border that the UK swore would be open as per the 1997 Good Friday agreement.
Winston thought an Anglo-American union was a reasonable idea 70+ years ago...
We live in interesting times. England out of the EU, while Scotland and Wales in the EU and Ireland reunited.
Is this the beginning of a Celtic renewal?
*****************************************
Celtic renewal? In the EU? Scotland, Wales and Ireland had better enjoy the MASSIVE waves of Muslims that Germany (aka the EU) and Turkey are about to send their way. Enjoy the never ending suck. In two weeks England, thankfully, will no longer be subject to the tyranny of the EU’s globalist bureaucrats.
This, according to the very same BBC:
“What does the Good Friday Agreement say about a hard border?
“A lot less than you might think. The only place in which it alludes to infrastructure at the border is in the section on security.
“During the Troubles there were heavily fortified army barracks, police stations and watchtowers along the border. They were frequently attacked by Republican paramilitaries. Part of the peace deal involved the UK government agreeing to a process of removing those installations in what became known as “demilitarisation”.
“The agreement states that “the development of a peaceful environment... can and should mean a normalisation of security arrangements and practices.” The government committed to “as early a return as possible to normal security arrangements in Northern Ireland, consistent with the level of threat”. That included “the removal of security installations”. That is as far as the text goes.
“There is no explicit commitment to never harden the border, and there is nothing about customs posts or regulatory controls.”
Sounds like no reason a border resembling the pre-9/11 U.S.-Canadian border couldn’t exist. Ireland is an island. You shouldn’t need more of a border beyond customs controls, unlike Ireland is actively undermining border security in ways which would themselves violate the Good Friday accord.
Plaid Cymru is a Communist Party. I’d love to see an independent Wales, but I wouldn’t trust Plaid Cymru, as much as I don’t trust the American Socialist Party (fka Democrat Party).
Any fantasies Yurps have about breaking up the UK are just that. Fantasies. A significant part of your would-be empire is leaving. Deal with it.
“Is this the beginning of a Celtic renewal?”
There have been signs of a Celtic revival in Brittany as well: http://eucenterillinois-language.blogspot.com/2014/12/defying-odds-resurgence-of-breton.html
Even Cornish is making a comeback: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180412-the-rebirth-of-britains-lost-languages
Of course they do, because it's their annual conference. If they didn't make noises about independence at their annual party love-in, they'd all give up and go home. That's what the conference is for. You then hear nothing more about independence until the next year.
I had to step away from Welsh language groups. Too many ill tempered, potty mouth socialists. A daily session with the Duolingo app is my fallback.
It would be nice to save those endangered languages
The UK and Ireland both agreed the Good Friday Agreement including its provisions that the border be open, that there be free access between Ireland and NI and that people in NI can be both British and Irish and choose to use either or both citizenships.
The word of the Good Friday Agreement isn’t broken by a hard border but such a border goes against the grain of the stated intents of close cooperation. A principle to which the UK was genuinely committed.
The republic of Ireland isn’t willing to make any compromise on how that border stays open as it see’s the potential for a return to “the Troubles”
>> Nobody at the time foresaw that this might ever change, so <<
That’s absurd! The Maastricht treaty barely survived the House of Commons just a couple years earlier, only after securing an opt-out from adopting the Euro. EU membership was ALWAYS extremely unpopular in the UK. If the Irish signatories didn’t realize that, they were the biggest fools ever. If they knew that, and thought they could force the UK to stay in the EU by signing the treaty, then damn every last one of them to Hell.
GDP per capita is fairly meaningless, except as a political willy-waving excercise. Average wages are rougly equvilent at just over $55,000 but unemployment is 3.7% in the UK vs 5.4% in Ireland. Ireland’s higher gdp per capita in the face of this reflects the fact that they have a much higher proportion of their national wealth concentrated in fewer hands, which is not a positive. Net migration from Ireland to the UK is MUCH higher than the other way around, and I would probably say that the vast majority of “Brits” emmigrating to Ireland do so because they are already Irish by blood and have simply moved back to their Irish homeland to be with family.
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/ireland/uk?sc=XE34
Anti-British petty nationalism is inherently left wing because unionism is associated with right wingism and “colonialism” and Welsh/Scottish etc nationalism is a way of wallowing in a victim narrative of oppression by the nasty old English, as is the wont of leftists everywhere who love to try and mitigate their self-loathing by trying to find an excuse for claiming victimhood.
no
the article is basically irrelevant ink on a page to be discarded after the writer gets payed.
well, he did exaggerate, as the opinion poll says 24% would vote for independence now, but that IS a significant uptick from 6 % a few years ago
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.