The Poppy

[lynchbhoy]

So no evidence, opinion presented as fact (a few liked minded people holding the same view is not evidence) and an attempt to label me bigotted/sectarian, same old tatics, its amazing what passes for debate on here.
Have a good weekend, hope your visual senses aren't accosted by any nasty poppies, we wouldn't want it ruined would we 

Head in the sand

Head up your arse!

think I've already pointed out that you have commandeered this tactic as well !

take a trip over to England next year girls and actually gt out of yer wee blinkered orange powered comfort zone !
you can spout your nonsense stats on here and lack of points or any valid context all you like - but if you cant even accept reality - or just keep lying to yourselves - then good luck !

btw its this intransigent mind set that helping erode away the six counties back into re-unification !

Show me were i used your crap no substance 'debating' tactics, i didn't i like to have a bit of evidence to back up assertions, you seem to find this an annoying irrelevance to getting your rather warped viewpoint across though. Oh i forgot thats crap debating tactic number 3 on here, make the claim that you quashed/pointed out the flaw in someones argument on a previous post and hope that no one notices that in reality you've done no such thing.

Have you ever even tried to engage with someone wearing a poppy (certainly no evidence of you engaging with people of differing opinions on here thats for sure), oh i forgot you don't need to you have special psychic abilities that allow you to read peoples thoughts.
And and you have a few like minded prejudiced characters on an internet forum (a forum setup to discuss an organisation whose basic aim is the strengthening of the National Identity in a 32 County Ireland) that share your same view (such a surprise), so of course you must be right.
Who needs such trifling things such as information, facts or evidence when you have the backing of your like minded peers, thats definitely the way forward for the island, we need more visionaries like yourself.

for all your pontificating and dodging, you still cannot argue against why proportionally way less people in England wear poppies in comparison to the north of Ireland - !!


yours is hardly a 'debating' technique !

run along like good lad !
come back when you embrace reality !
(ie take yer head out of the sand/yer sphinter!! )

[delboy]

Ah number four play the man and sidestep the issue, just number five to go, tell the poster they aren't worth talking to and exit stage door left, pretending that you won the point (i see stage one of tactic five is already being played).

Its a simple enough concept but i'll explain it again anyway, their is nothing to dodge, you haven't presented any evidence to back your assertion that poppies are worn disproportionally by the NI populace.

Nor have you presented any evidence to support your claim that the majority of peopling wearing them do it merely as a bigoted exercise to annoy you (egotistical or what).

You opinion is not fact no matter how much you wanted it to be accepted as such, your whole claim is based upon mere conjecture.

Come back with something, anything to support your claim and then perhaps your hollow claims that im dodging the issue may have a shred of validity.

[pintsofguinness]

Its a simple enough concept but i'll explain it again anyway, their is nothing to dodge, you haven't presented any evidence to back your assertion that poppies are worn disproportionally by the NI populace.

What evidence do you want?

YOu tell me why I walk down a busy city centre street in England and only see a handful of poppies but if I walked through particular areas in the North of Irleand they'd be everywhere?  Why is that?

[longrunsthefox]

You see tho'n banner on the Cop at Liverpool game this week of Bob Paisley and he was wearing a poppy on it?... Jesus wept!

[delboy]

Its a simple enough concept but i'll explain it again anyway, their is nothing to dodge, you haven't presented any evidence to back your assertion that poppies are worn disproportionally by the NI populace.

What evidence do you want?

YOu tell me why I walk down a busy city centre street in England and only see a handful of poppies but if I walked through particular areas in the North of Irleand they'd be everywhere?  Why is that?

Surely it wouldn't be beyond the imiganition of even the most simple dullard to do a bit of research on poppy sales and tell us how many are sold in NI and how that stacks up proportionally in terms of the UK as a whole (it says a lot when i have to tell you how to present your own argument).

As for the second contention that poppy wearing by the majority is a f**k you to non wearers,   I doubt you'll be able to prove that, but thats rather the point of im driving at.

[Main Street]

It's perfectly sensible. What's your issue with the fact that FG are unionists. It's hardly a new idea. Everything FG do in relation to the north begins with unionism. FG position is one of shut up and accept the status quo. That is unionism, the status quo is the Union and FG believe all is as it should be. If you have a different definition of FGs position or unionism then state it. I might agree.

If you did, I'd start to worry.

Good wind-up though.

Hardy, from a northern nationalist perspective, Fine Gael are the southern equivalent of Unionists.
That perception had been well earned by Fine Gael over a 35 year period.

If you want to nitpick and breakdown the policies of Unionist and Fine Gael then no,
one Gay Mitchell does not define FG party policy as regards to entry to the Commonwealth.

[Hardy]

I'm not talking about perceptions and I'm not here to defend FG.

Zapatista made bald statements that are complete nonsense, including that FG were a Unionist party (later he changed it to "unionist with a small u") and "wanted a union with Britian". Pure shite. He then went on to say that support for the current arrangement on the North equalled Unionism. More shite. As I said, that definition would make SF, as participants in the arrangement, even  more Unionist than FG. 

And even if it were FG policy to seek entry to the commonwealth, that's still not Unionism. Or even unionism.

Anyway I'm finished - let FG speak for themselves, but I don't think you'll see them running anytime soon on a platform of re-formation of the United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Ireland.

[pintsofguinness]

Its a simple enough concept but i'll explain it again anyway, their is nothing to dodge, you haven't presented any evidence to back your assertion that poppies are worn disproportionally by the NI populace.

What evidence do you want?

YOu tell me why I walk down a busy city centre street in England and only see a handful of poppies but if I walked through particular areas in the North of Irleand they'd be everywhere?  Why is that?

Surely it wouldn't be beyond the imiganition of even the most simple dullard to do a bit of research on poppy sales and tell us how many are sold in NI and how that stacks up proportionally in terms of the UK as a whole (it says a lot when i have to tell you how to present your own argument).

As for the second contention that poppy wearing by the majority is a f**k you to non wearers,   I doubt you'll be able to prove that, but thats rather the point of im driving at.

Well we're not talking about how many is bought, we're talking about people wearing them.
Why do you think more people in the six counties wear them than in England?

[Yes I Would]

He knows fine rightly why pints but will never admit it on here..
Thank f**k thats them put away for another 1211 months, although if 'our boys' continue to take a pasting in Helmand we could see them out and about maybe early Sept next year.

[Zapatista]

I'm not talking about perceptions and I'm not here to defend FG.

Zapatista made bald statements that are complete nonsense, including that FG were a Unionist party (later he changed it to "unionist with a small u") and "wanted a union with Britian". Pure shite. He then went on to say that support for the current arrangement on the North equalled Unionism. More shite. As I said, that definition would make SF, as participants in the arrangement, even  more Unionist than FG. 

And even if it were FG policy to seek entry to the commonwealth, that's still not Unionism. Or even unionism.

Anyway I'm finished - let FG speak for themselves, but I don't think you'll see them running anytime soon on a platform of re-formation of the United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Ireland.

I didn't expect ye to go on a rant from my initial post were I'd have try to explain why Fg are unionist.

[red hander]

From Saturday's Irish News


Illegal war is turning into a British institution Patrick Murphy
By Patrick Murphy


The war in Afghanistan is becoming a wonderfully British institution. Although the US is the lead partner, the war is increasingly portrayed by Gordon Brown as the latest chapter in that unending, romantic, political novel in which plucky Tommies fight the savage hordes in the desert sands, to uphold democracy, decency and that sense of fair play which only the British possess.

Better still, Mr Brown now claims that the war is to defend Britain from attack, citing the London bombings in 2005 as evidence of the threat. He has not admitted that these bombings were related to Britain's illegal invasion of Iraq. He therefore portrays the British as victims in Afghanistan, in that wonderful political art of aggrieved imperialism which has marked British foreign policy for 500 years.

Indeed if the Afghan war did not exist, the political and economic collapse of the Labour government might well require Mr Brown to invent a war, especially one with a 19th-century enemy like the Taliban.

The British certainly had a hand in inventing the modern state of Afghanistan. They initially invaded the region in 1839, becoming the first occupying force in Kabul in modern times. They then promptly became the first modern foreign army (all 16,000 of them, bar one) to be wiped out there, during the winter snows of 1842.

They returned in 1878 in the next chapter of what they called the Great Game – rivalry between Russia and Britain for control of the area. This time they established a puppet government that gave the British empire control over Afghan foreign policy. Despite the intervening years and changes in government, that is effectively where we are now.

Their latest puppet is Hamid Karzai, who 'won' the presidential election earlier this year by intimidation, bribery, ballot-rigging and other electoral fraud. When President Obama demanded a new election, Mr Karzai's main opponent refused to stand again. Mr Karzai was then declared the elected president of Afghanistan for the next five years.

This is the man for whom the uniformed youth of Britain arrive home dead, dying and maimed. But the government, and much of the media, are still on the side of 'our boys at the front'. They portray them as something close to the armed wing of the Last night of the Proms, the jingoistic classical concert at which Rule britannica is played amid flag-waving and apparent nostalgia for the days of the empire.

It is easy to advocate dying for Britain in the relative comfort of the Royal Albert Hall – especially when someone else is doing it for you. The claim that every dead soldier has died a heroic death is, understandably, comforting to the family of the bereaved. But while there may be heroic last moments in war, there is no heroic death – just human degradation.

By the time their bodies are returned to Britain the indignity of death has been

air-brushed from reality in the traditional funeral parades through the Wiltshire village of Wootton Bassett. It is a tradition that dates back all of two years, when renovations at RAF Brize Norton required flights to divert to RAF Lyneham. Wootton Bassett found itself on the main route to the Oxford hospital, where a coroner examines the bodies before releasing them to their families.

The media love this archetypal English village. They quote the assistant in Crump's, the butcher's shop, where they stop serving when the coffins pass: "We all stand outside the shop and take our hats off. They come out of the pubs and stand in silence. It is a very patriotic scene." (That's British patriotism – coming out of the pub. Irish patriots tend to go in the opposite direction.)

The pubs will empty again at 1.30pm on Monday when, according to the town council, another repatriation will take place.

It is important to respect the dead.

But it would appear at best unusual and at worst unethical to commemorate the dead without commenting on the living who send them to their deaths, especially in the cause of an undemocratic government.

By linking the Second World War with the illegal war in Iraq and the immoral war in Afghanistan in the same commemoration ceremonies, the British hope to cloak contemporary foreign policy with historical respectability.

Thus they use poppies and Wootton Bassett funerals to confer hero status on the recent dead, while denying the futility of the war in which they fight and the immorality of the politics for which they die.

Oh what a brutal, but beautifully British, war we have.

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

Illegal war is turning into a British institution Patrick Murphy
By Patrick Murphy
...
The media love this archetypal English village. They quote the assistant in Crump's, the butcher's shop, where they stop serving when the coffins pass: "We all stand outside the shop and take our hats off. They come out of the pubs and stand in silence. It is a very patriotic scene." (That's British patriotism – coming out of the pub. Irish patriots tend to go in the opposite direction.)

[Evil Genius]

Hmmm, interesting to see who* played the entire 90 minutes at Centre Back for the "Rest of the World XI" in Reading last week:
http://www.readingfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10306~1874414,00.html

The game was in aid of these people:
http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/



* - With a name like "Kenneth Edward Cunningham", d'ye think there's any chance he's a Prod? 

[lynchbhoy]

Hmmm, interesting to see who* played the entire 90 minutes at Centre Back for the "Rest of the World XI" in Reading last week:
http://www.readingfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10306~1874414,00.html

The game was in aid of these people:
http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/



* - With a name like "Kenneth Edward Cunningham", d'ye think there's any chance he's a Prod? 

I'm friendly with cunninghams who are prod and cath ...


anyhow so what !

[Evil Genius]

Hmmm, interesting to see who* played the entire 90 minutes at Centre Back for the "Rest of the World XI" in Reading last week:
http://www.readingfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10306~1874414,00.html

The game was in aid of these people:
http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/



* - With a name like "Kenneth Edward Cunningham", d'ye think there's any chance he's a Prod? 

I'm friendly with cunninghams who are prod and cath ...


anyhow so what !

"So what"?

Considering that certain posters such as yourself get so agitated by your fellow Irish men and women in Northern Ireland who choose to wear a Poppy etc, I'm surprised there wasn't more comment at a Southern Irishman like Cunningham, with 70 Republic of Ireland caps to his name, including as Captain, helping out a cause such as this one.

Some sort of a "Fcuk You!" message, perhaps?