ireland is one island. That i will agree to. As far as being one country ? the republic in the south is a failed State. 100 years of failure.
mass unemployment, emigration, abuses by the clergy, cronyism, corruption of senior politicians, an intrusion into private morality, drugs and massive drug gangs killing each other in broad daylight, etc etc, the speed of uncontrolled immigration sprouting ghettoes , high taxation, crappy NHS, expensive prescriptions, absence of left-right politics, same political elites all the time, white collar crime and tax dodging multinationals, US military use of Shannon airport in spite of 99% of public opposing it..... Proportional Representation voting has produced a rot worthy of the Banana republics with the sunshine.

Some southern catholics prefer the mainland UK with its accountability of politicians and secular ways.

Ulster is another failed State-let. Massive welfare dependency all round and costing a ton of money to prop up each year.

United ireland ? i should coco

Eze Peasy at Anfield....

I totally agree. It was an idiotic approach which they then compounded by further bad decisions. Ireland should have remained as one country with a Catholic majority with the Protestant immigrants being represented proportionately and locally.
Historically, the British make a mess of things and then leave.

Of course a similar thing happened across the Atlantic which is now called the United States. I guess 'native' tribes there didn't learn to make bombs or get support from abroad.

Edited by Hrolf The Ganger (21 Mar 2017 3.22pm)

lets not talk about Brexit and the (welcome) death of the EU.

interestingly, the way the UK ruling classes treated the Catholic Irish over 400 years ago did set a precedent. It explains how the US treated the native indians or how the australian whites treated the native aboriginals. McGuinness is a symptom of a messed up policy dating back centuries.

Eze Peasy at Anfield....

Its strange that after thousands of people getting killed over 30 years , peace talks getting nowhere, things only realy got sorted when the london wall tipper truck devastated the banking area in london, london wall, and the same happened in the other banking area, canary wharf, human life means nothing compared to the pound note!

I suppose likening Ireland to the USA is rather a crass comparison in some respects, but it is slightly ironic that many Irish Catholic immigrants heading to the USA were taking advantage of a situation not entirely dissimilar to the Protestant migration to Northern Ireland. By that time of course most of the American 'natives' were killed off. I guess what it highlights is that life is mostly a struggle for self interest and self preservation. There are always winners and losers. Take the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. One minute the Jewish people are the victims of self interested Nazis and the next, Jewish settlers are oppressing the Palestinians all in the name of good old self interest.

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Scottish and English settlers had continued to migrate to Ireland in large numbers and eventually became a majority or near. Would they have eventually rejected English rule like the Americans? Or would an all out civil war erupted. We will never know.

One thing is certain, we must learn from the past or be the victims in the future.

think i read somewhere that churchill tried to get ireland to join us in ww2 and if they did then they could have the other counties, but de valera didnt believe him

They're justified, and they're ancient
And they drive an ice cream van