Messages

Antrim tried both of those boys......

Which is exactly where Down are headed. Anyone who thinks a change of management is the answer probably thinks you can stand on top of Mount Etna and put it out with a fire hose.

Maybe you're right passedit.

But from time to time everything in this world needs a quick fix before it can be attended to properly.

Our senior county players need a shot in the arm. Basically they need a win or else they will free fall, head down in D3. Maybe if we ride this out for another few weeks that win will happen naturally. But there's not much evidence of that happening. It looks like the stimulation needs to come from outside.

one thing is absolutely for sure... Wee James's last two seasons were much better than Wee Pete's. Time is a great healer but it's amazing how the past few seasons under Burns have made people forget about just how awful those final McGrath seasons were.

Anyhow the lack of viable options is the very reason the County Board should not act at this time (though I really wish they had have shown the same restraint / consideration  when moving McCorry along). I just find it so hard to believe that Eamon would want to continue. I doubt the players would even need to run a "coup" so much as have a quiet word.

2 games into the season and it's no longer a question of whether Eamon Burns is going, but how he'll end up going. The county board won't oust him, so it's going to boil down to whether Eamon walks with his head held high, or whether the players force him out. I've no desire to ever see the latter happen in our county. Which kind of leaves only only amicable solution.

I'd wager my house he won't be there for the Ulster Championship. So the sooner the better.

[I don't buy this "less roll the dice and see what happens"]

But again, by defending the squeezed middle and highlighting the role of the media, the undertones of what you're saying is that a much larger proportion of people who voted for Brexit (than against it) only did so because they are either a) stupid, b) brainwashed, or c) brainwashed and stupid.

Disagreeing with someone is one thing, but I expect them to be able to coherently rationalise their own point of view.

What I get from this is that while newspapers have influence, most people will actually look at their own situation when casting a vote. If it's good, okay, or even "least worst", they'll vote to maintain the status quo.  If not, they'll look for alternatives. That, in my unqualified opinion, is why Brexit happened. I believe it had little or nothing to do with racism or the NHS; they were just the stories used to fill column inches that people no longer read. A succession of UK governments have seen life become a little tougher and less fair for its citizens. This was the response.

Once again, as per my point above, I expect them to able to articulate how this response will actually improve things. I don't buy this "less roll the dice and see what happens" because many thousands of other people will have their lives adversely affected by the change (and I don't mean me).

Because you in your ivory tower didn't buy it are seriously saying you speak for the masses.  Many people saw brexit as a new start, and thought anything was better than the status quo.

Why did they think Brexit was a new start ?

Sure why vote for anything, ever?

The "middle" played a sizeable role in how the votes was cast. The well-educated, squeezed middle played a sizeable, meaty, chunky role.

They played a role, but a majority of this group did not support Brexit.

Brexit is relatively complex matter, since the union has many benefits as well as some trade-offs for those benefits. The media managed to simplify discussion to the downsides of the EU without doing so for the upsides and managed to engender an anti expert campaign against those who proposed a more complex view.

Had such a referendum been run in the ROI the referendum commission would have ensured a more balanced presentation of information at least.

But again, by defending the squeezed middle and highlighting the role of the media, the undertones of what you're saying is that a much larger proportion of people who voted for Brexit (than against it) only did so because they are either a) stupid, b) brainwashed, or c) brainwashed and stupid.

Which is an appalling superiority complex.

---

Re propaganda.

Look at the fall of communism in Europe and China. In places where the media was savagely controlled by government, there is no doubt that the people of those countries were spoon fed a daily dose on the outstanding results of communism throughout their entire lives. 

Yet when communism fell, it fell hard. There weren't many holding back to review the pamphlets.

What I get from this is that while newspapers have influence, most people will actually look at their own situation when casting a vote. If it's good, okay, or even "least worst", they'll vote to maintain the status quo.  If not, they'll look for alternatives. That, in my unqualified opinion, is why Brexit happened. I believe it had little or nothing to do with racism or the NHS; they were just the stories used to fill column inches that people no longer read. A succession of UK governments have seen life become a little tougher and less fair for its citizens. This was the response.

Most opinions on Brexit must be based on supposition, as the final deal is not yet known. So anything I am going on to say is making the assumption that Mrs Thatch....er May means it when she says no customs union, the common travel area is something that can get around the movement of people.
No matter what way you look at it no customs union will mean the death knell for an all island economy and be especially hard on the Agri food sector which both jurisdictions see as a key industry. For instance about a third of NI's milk is processed in the ROI and turned into Irish Cheese to be exported to the EU (UK and beyond), after without a custom's union there will be a tariff making this milk more expensive and uncompetitive, aside from that EU rules as they stand would preclude any product made with this milk from being sold within the EU. NI's pork plants rely on ROI pigs to make them competitive, the lamb and beef sector rely on processors in the ROI to process a significant amount of their product. In short there is a lot of transfer of agri food products between both jurisdictions at various points of the process. It is hard to see how this is not a negative to both parties. On the retail side visitors from the ROI to NI will have the same constraints on goods that exist between Non EU and EU at present, including tariffs and bans on importing certain products and food stuffs. That is before we look at the special arrangement that allows Trump to give May one whenever he likes. That will see an influx of GM foods, hormone soaked beef and bleached chicken which even if banned from this island will still be a threat given that part of the Island is in the UK. So if this is scaremongering so be it but it is scenarios such as this that the DUP are saying bring it on too with out thought or plan. May does not give a stuff about Ireland north or south.

The problem with all this is that you are making wildly pessimistic suppositions ("death knell for all island economy"), that the UK is going to pull down a gate and not let anything in or out, and that the EU is going to put up similar gates at the other side... just in case those slippery b**tard brits get a head start.

Sorry to tell you, but this is plainly f**king bonkers.

Some things will change.  Some for the better, some for the worse. Some pipelines will close, and some opportunities will appear in their place. Take a walk down any street in your town and remember what companies and businesses used to be there, and it will help you realise that this is a fact of life, and very little to do with Brexit. Have a look at the Fortune 500 in 2007, 1997, 1987, 1977, 1967, and you'll see this affects every walk of life from small retailer to international conglomerate.

Honestly I find it extraordinary that you would believe that the super rich and the underclass came together to trigger Brexit.

There's around 5% unemployment in the UK. Feel free to add in another 5% for those who don't want to work but are forced to in order to maintain benefits.

There's also around 18% of the UK population who are aged over 65. So that's what, maybe 25% of everyone entitled to vote.

That gets you to 35% of people, who perhaps one and all were brainwashed to voted for Brexit. They are all, after all, complete idiots who do what the Sun tell them to.

But that still leaves 65% of the voting population, which means that some 17 out of each 65 must be of the super rich, high earning, variety?

When circa 3-4% of the voting population make over £100k pa, this would be most strange.

----

Face facts folks. Not everyone at the top of the payscale voted leave, nor did each of their counterparts at the bottom.

The "middle" played a sizeable role in how the votes was cast. The well-educated, squeezed middle played a sizeable, meaty, chunky role.

[Nope.]

The 2 key selling points of Brexit were

1. 350m for the NHS
2 Control migration

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/10/brexit-will-cause-vanishingly-small-fall-in-net-migration-report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rh6qqsmxNs

Nope.

That's what the press decided to run with in an attempt to distill a multi-layered, trillion part picture into something that people could understand, then latch on to / turn against.

What people actually voted for was whether the UK would be better off as a single entity, or as part of a union of countries. There wasn't a magic line running through the country whereby those who voted "leave" had an inability to see a bigger picture at play.

While many of the "stay" diehards have managed to convince themselves that the vote was about racism, and that anyone who voted to leave is neanderthal racist with a negative IQ: that brush stroke argument says more about their own paranoid beliefs than it does about the voters in question.

Orior I know dozens of people who can string together Amhrán na bhFiann in pigeon Irish if challenged, yet they don't know the words in English. So basically they've no idea what the song is about.

My lesson from this is that more people than you might imagine don't give a fiddler's f**k about why things are called what they are.

Certainly it has never bothered me why Hill Street in Newry is flat: I just need to know what shops are on it.

The Irish Language movement has unfortunately gained some of the same fascist / zealot undertones that the poppy campaign has unfortunately endured. For the diehards, general awareness is not enough, and they will campaign, dump and force their wares on everyone until it becomes a tribal statement to step aside.

I'm guessing that the DUP's more moderate types are wary of this, while the hardliners would always say no anyway - because that's their thing. Either way, the Irishman Language movement will make greater advances into NI culture (I believe) if they target people who want to learn it, and allow it to spread organically, rather than force everyone to join in.

I want my children to grow up in an open broadminded outward looking forward thinking country with the 6/26 Boundary,  if it still exists, being just a line on a map.
Meanwhile Ukipites and their fellow travellers in the DUP, various shades of Conservatives all try to re create their version of 1950s Britain - narrow minded, xenophobic, backward thinking etc which will inevitably reinforce the border in my country.
Wait till No brains and wobbler get held up for an hour at a customs/immigration checkpoint on their way to the AI Final.
It will be 2 hours going home as some British immigration official takes an hour to understand how someone from the 6 Cos has an "Eire"/EU passport.
Losing the run of myself?
No - see how the Brits didn't pass a single amendment or take any heed if the unique circumstances of the 6 Cos.
It's full steam ahead.........

I was a child who grew up in a border town with a civil war taking place around that border.

These 1 hour queues are not something I remember, even though there were technically 4 checkpoints on main roads. Those who have something to hide don't tend to use main roads. Nobody is daft enough to believe otherwise.

As for your comments on England going back to the 1950s. All those working class Northern England towns didn't have a rosy 1950s. But that generation had more disposable income simply because their wage was worth more than their expenses. Their descendants feel failed by government for not protecting their interests. I could point out that immigrants who are prepared to do semi skilled and trade labour for wages from the 1990s - while living in a what can only be described as relative squalor for one of the most developed countries in the world - might actually be a contributing factor behind this wage disparity. You'll no doubt call it racist to bring this up. Go for it, idon't mind. I just hope your children can afford their parent's houses.

It is also full of people - some of whom no doubt are idiots - who have become sick and tired of the relentlessly condescending and pious absolutism, which has been a constant accompaniment to the "stay" side of the debate.

This stance isn't Trumpite, and it's certainly not anti-intellectual.

Nor is it not born from a wish to ignore expertise. Instead it comes from a desire to evaluate whether the current status quo is necessarily the best way forward.

Personally I find it abhorrent that anyone could possibly believe they have all the answers, or that this can be boiled down to a Star Wars style confrontation of "good" vs "evil". That there are pockets of independent countries dotted all around the EU, some of them with aspirational economies, and some less so, should surely tell anyone that being part of a single union isn't a magic wand.

So I guess I'm happy to be described as an "idiot"... so long as it's accepted that I'm an idiot with an open mind.

---

The broader issue may have pros and cons, the main thing you can say is that there have been many lies on the pro side and many people who justify the process by reference to reasons which are not based on facts.

The specific issue is Britain pursuing policies as if it was an island, and applying them to NI which shares an island and overthrowing a successful peace settlement which had established the principle of consultation and consensus, however imperfectly implemented. The latter is not a good thing whatever way you look at it. 

While I don't actually disagree with you, can you actually blame Britain's politicians for carrying out the will of the people?

Things will change in NI.

But not necessarily for the worst.

There's an opportunity to make money from being a border region. Always was, always will be. as long as you sat fouced on the opportunity that is. Stay focused on the threats and of course they won't be long manufacturing themselves.

It is also full of people - some of whom no doubt are idiots - who have become sick and tired of the relentlessly condescending and pious absolutism, which has been a constant accompaniment to the "stay" side of the debate.

This stance isn't Trumpite, and it's certainly not anti-intellectual.

Nor is it not born from a wish to ignore expertise. Instead it comes from a desire to evaluate whether the current status quo is necessarily the best way forward.

Personally I find it abhorrent that anyone could possibly believe they have all the answers, or that this can be boiled down to a Star Wars style confrontation of "good" vs "evil". That there are pockets of independent countries dotted all around the EU, some of them with aspirational economies, and some less so, should surely tell anyone that being part of a single union isn't a magic wand.

So I guess I'm happy to be described as an "idiot"... so long as it's accepted that I'm an idiot with an open mind.

---

See Rossfan's latest post (about 10 above) for an example of what I'm describing.

He has consigned his future to a horrendous dystopia with extraordinary unemployment, the re-engagement of a bloody civil war, and the building of a physical wall across our small island.

FFS, why not the potato famine while we're at it?

Those posting their disgust here, can you all speak Irish, do your kids attend naiscoil, bhunscoil, meánscoil - or do you just want this act to give two fingers to the prods?

Hilarious I mean those feckers at burntollet were just asking for it how dare they. If you cant see the bigger picture then I give up.

What's the bigger picture?

personally I find it extremely frustrating that the communication costs of local governments - every minute, publication, signpost, announcement - are more than double what they would be if English only, yet there is not a single person on this earth who understands the Irish version who also wouldn't understand the English.



I'm all for a bit of culture. I'm all for Gaeiligors having the opportunity to further their language. But to be honest I'd place a higher value on public sector efficiency. An unnecessary  duplication of public costs is shameful imho, regardless of your beliefs.

[As a subject it seems to attract people who wilfully hunt down and then promote only those pockets of information (whether based on fact or not, as long as someone has said it somewhere) that back up their original stance.]

I look forward to the day when someone comes along who is able to analyse Brexit with complete objectivity.

As a subject it seems to attract people who wilfully hunt down and then promote only those pockets of information (whether based on fact or not, as long as someone has said it somewhere) that back up their original stance.

It actually become sort of religious.

Which can't end well.

Best post ever on the subject, this bold bit is seafoid in a nutshell.

Show me an economic case for Brexit a mhaicín

I don't have to. Here's the thing. It could be 20 years before the effect of Brexit is measurable.... yet no matter what those figures suggest it will still be impossible to assess whether it was the right decision, the wrong decision, or entirely neutral.

For until someone invents a time machine, it's impossible to know how things would have operated in an alternate reality with a different decision. In that alternate reality, for example, it might have taken 5 more years for the Italians to trigger their Brexit and sow the seeds for the EU's disintegration. Or perhaps the increasing right wing presence of governments in Europe might have forced the UK into a hasty retreat. Nobody will ever know.

Which ultimately, due to the inability of human beings to run accurate simulations of the butterfly effect, is why economists are, to a man (and woman) almost always and completely wrong in their economic predictions. It's effectively guesswork to devise a macroeconomic strategy from the events of the past, as there are just too many variables, and not enough constants.

I look forward to the day when someone comes along who is able to analyse Brexit with complete objectivity.

As a subject it seems to attract people who wilfully hunt down and then promote only those pockets of information (whether based on fact or not, as long as someone has said it somewhere) that back up their original stance.

It has actually developed religious undertones.

Which can't end well.