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Vote Tory get Trump

The Tories are vulnerable

this election has nil to do with the NHS...in mainland UK it is all about Brexit.

the NHS is a bottomless pit and labour trying to focus this election on it is gaining no traction whatsoever.....

Thankfully a Tory majority is on the horizon, Boris can get the Brexit deal done and dusted, and then a Border Poll is accelerated.

I am sensing reading this forum, that you nordies who are supposedly united irelanders, are more castle catholics than true green and golders.........you all want a united Ireland arising from a smooth transition.........that will never happen......several of you would appear to prefer the status quo, than take the temporary suffering which would be the fallout of a positive vote for a UI.

not one Laois huring referee has officiated in any of the leinster club competitions this winter, says a lot for the standard we are dealing with in the county.

with the loyalist paras getting big time behind DUP, that party will easily hold East Belfast and North Down they will win rather easily.
North Belfast remains key to the DUP confidence....Dodds is arguably the biggest player in the party and he is very street wise, coming across as a serious politician and party mastermind....however Dodds has demonstrated that he is happy to get dirty with DUP accepting the loyalist para help to try and save his sea.

we know the likes of Sammy and Gregory are pure 100% bigots, Dodds has tried to present himself otherwise, this election is exposing the mask.

Mid Ulster/Rev Willie McCrea......why blame the SDLP.....why didn't SF step aside if they feared for the DUPer taking the seat.

Giant Squid a very fair summary of the 2019 season.
my titbits
R/Errill....will remain the team to beat for the next 3 or 4 years.

B/Kilcotton...the single most important player in that side is Joe Campion...he had a very good 2019, bit others need to step up to the plate or they could be one hit wonders.

C/B...the hot and cold team, sad to see them limping out after a terrific group stage run....what is the problem, are they too cocky or alternatively lack belief?

Camross....tried to be a bit too smart this season, mixing the senior and intermediate squads, and had they held on against R/E in the semi, they would have won the county final...will be a factor for the next 2 or 3 years, years 5 to 10 down the line, they could be totally dominant in the senior grade given the raw material they have coming through as opposed to others.

Castletown...should be pleased with their year, almost maximising their resources. they have not got the forward firepower to win a title in the next 5 years, so I think they will be the Ballinakill(2012-18) of the next 4 or 5 years, reaching the odd semi final without ever threatening to win a championship.

Ballinakill...nosediving towards Senior B, and it will be a long time before they contest a Senior A semi final again.

Abbeyleix...will be happy to survive, if getting a kinder draw in 2020 it might energise them and I think they could be a surprise package in the coming years, and reach a semi final.

Portlaoise...a very poor 2019...no guarantees they can instantly bounce back in 2020.

alliance will win no seats. the dupers have a lock on east Belfast and robinson will hold easily. in north down the dupers were almost on terms with her ladyship and they will easily swap aside alliance.

only a pure mug would want labour to win in the mainland, the party, once the dominant force in Scotland, may be lucky to win one seat up there.  unless you are blind, deaf or dumb, the only tactic and policy for this election that labour has, is to lock in all the muslins via postal votes, and just like in the recent  bye election in peterboro, hope to steal tight marginals with these locks.  labour is now the party of islam.

lads the idea of a UI may be pie in the sky, nonetheless, one must start examining likely outcomes in the event materialising.

firstly, you must acknowledge that for Unionists, the loyal Union is everything in their life, the DNA profile is all Union, and nothing, socially or economically trumps the Union loyalty.  Yes, the Unionists are the descendants of planters from 250 odd years ago, unfortunately they are now here in NI for 6,7 or 8 family generations and bedded in and in most cases, they may have lost contact with their Scottish origins. In other words, they have no where to go for comfort.

If a Border Poll was conducted, one would fancy that the Irish Government would engineer a position in which both the EU & the USA were vested parties/safeguarders of the result. 
If that poll resulted in a decision in favour of a UI, then as suggested by Benny, there would be loyalist outrage and violence and plenty of innocent victims.
I would expect that the UK parliament would respect the result, and what could well happen is that either the EU(who will shortly have an EU army) or the US would step in as a peace keeping force to stem the violence....the irony here, being that the Brit army of the 70s gets replaced by a green leaning army.
What happens on the unionist front? so they all relocate and concentrate in North Down, Lisburn, Ballymena, and we end up with a kind of Cyprus arrangement?...in that like the Turks in Cyprus, they would never accept a Dublin government, yet refuse to leave their loyalist ghettos.

In the "you got to break eggs to make an omelette", when geographic territory changes, there are winners and losers in the process....Yugoslavia disintegrated quickly, yet Croatia and Slovenia rapidly got on their feet.  If a UI emerged, I would fancy on the economic front, the EU & Us lend significant support to help and that aspect may quell teething troubles.

You may not agree with the above airy fairy forecast, if you don't, perhaps you might lay out your vision for how the UI unfolds if a positive votes results from a poll, warts and all.

Taylor and Frank.....what you are saying, I completely understand...I trade with companies in the north and travel frequently up there, so I am no stranger to reality.
However, your suggestion, that the short term pain would be hard to stomach, rings alarms bells with me......and those alarms are in the event of a border poll, just as we saw play out in Scotland, a percentage of Northern Caths/Nationalists, especially civil servants, may fear jumping from a safe job environment into the unknown of a UI and the leakage of the 5 to 7% could be the difference between the Union staying or a UI....in other words too many are selfish voters and are happy to ignore the bigger picture.

The smart arses in the DUP have walked into their own Brexit trap and it would be a dreadful irony if the nationalist votes(anti Brexit) proved to be the release mechanism for the DUPers.

reading the various hopes and predictions of our friends based in ulster, what staggers me is that most of you are blind to the bigger picture.
as a southerner, who does hope for a United Ireland in my lifetime, Brexit, by accident, is the best chance of that happening.

There may be short term pain with Brexit, but if Boris manages to scramble a win in this election and get his deal through, then unless you are brain dead, what then happens is that Scotland with close to 85% of MPs from the SNP will be gagging for another independence referendum and overtime as is becoming evident, the little Englanders could not care less about NI, and that will open the door to the Border Poll.

Has it not dawned on Northern Nationalists, that in the past week, it has finally dawned on the DUPers and loyalists that Brexit could spell the end of the union, and now as we have seen this week, especially the guy on the Spotlight Special the other night, spouting the narrative that the "Union is more important than Brexit".

If you want a status quo of the north for another 50 years, then continue to pray for some mechanism that overturns Brexit.

If you wish see to the promised land of a United Ireland, then pray that Boris wins enough seats to force through the deal, which in turn sets in train the disintegration of the union.

a simply disastrous set of fixtures, cannot see a home win coming....and if we end up bottom two, does this drop us to tier 2 of the championship?

there was certainly a sense of poetic justice about roddys winner yesterday. if you study that youtube clip of the decisive goal, the justice is magnified when you identify the camross player closest to roddy when he strikes....the karma.

on the balance rathdowney were lucky, but you take the breaks in all sports.

c/b are the great underachievers of this era, far too profligate in the first half when they had the upperhand....if they had a free taker like scully, they would have triumphed.

no sure on the final, all here so far are saying B/K are favs, the bookies disagree and powers/boyles are 4/7 rathdowney, 6/4 bk.  Not one I would call.

best player in the two games yesterday was joe campion, great to see him back to his best, and ideal centre forward material was Laois hurlers in 2020.

with reference to the chances of Ciaran Kilkenny winning an All Star.

Can anyone detail the last year when a player was Man Of the Match in an All Ireland Final and failed to win an All Star in that given year?.

over the years, the all Ireland winners, sometimes very ordinary teams, have dominated the all stars, winning a disproportionate 8 to 10 gongs.
this Dublin team winning a 5th in a row is unique and I think they will deserve at least 8 or 9 of the all stars.

contrasting versus the sunday game pick, I am certain James McCarthy will be chosen instead of Boyle in the backs.

I also fancy, 4 Dubs namely, Con O Call, Paul Mannion, Ciaran Kilkenny and Brian Howard will be selected in the forwards. 

To omit Kilkenny or Mannion after yesterday would be barmy. 
With Sean O Shea certain of another place in the forwards, that will leave the last position between Michael Murphy, McShane and Clifford.

Don't  be surprised if McShane does not make the cut, after all, he was on a team which won no silverware and he also buckled, missing some handy frees when that semi final was in the melting pot.

Roscommon won because they were the hungrier outfit and when the game was in the melting pot, their appetite was in stark contrast to the galway one.

Alas, I fear hunger and honest application may only get you so far, and there is a strong possibility that the Rossie will not win another game, in fact, I dare say, many will view them as a weak link in the Super 8s and those coming through the qualifier route will be hoping they are in the Rossie group.

I'd say the GAA will ban us from the so called Super8s due to not being good enough.

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The solution will be to drop Roscommon into Tier 2 when the upstairs/downstairs policy of the GAA's polit-bureau is implemented.

in the draw this morning, I was hoping for Galway, Cork , Cavan in that order.
Most Laois people seemed to want Cavan, I did not because they had in the bank rock solid wins over Monaghan and Armagh and might be a step ahead of Laois.
I would have taken Galway first because the word is that Walsh has lost the dressing room and they would be vulnerable if you kept with them for 50 mins.

Cork is a so-so outfit..........forget about the challenge games  and the freakish win against Limerick, 3-3 in 5 minutes ended that game.  Overall Cork have the same professional losers in this team that have been knocking about for the last 3 or 4 years.

They done OK against Kerry, but I believe Kerry always fancied they would do enough to win and did not go gungho like in 2018. One fact is that after 58 minutes of the Munster final, the game was a draw and in the remaining 12 minutes plus stoppage time, Kerry, also down a man, won that period by 3 points and when all is said and done Cork only scored 13 times in that game.

Stripped back I think this is still the same moderate Cork team of recent years, confidence could be brittle and if Laois are up for the battle, we might have the appetite to see it out and wrestle a win.